No Joy But Lacks Salt
by Elliott Silver
Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash.  But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up. So she rises.  Now complete, with epilogue.
1. The Stain of Tears

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 1: The Stain of Tears

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash.

Rating Note: Some chapters will be rated M and those will be clearly noted. Please note that this Chapter is.

Author's Note: This is the first of a series of approximately seven chapters. It begins after the finale "Knockout" and follows the lives of Beckett and Castle, the repercussions and the aftermath of those events. I'm not a writer who can work without knowing the ending, so writing on the fly like this always feels like the floor is about to fall out and the sky fall in. For those reading – thank you for asking for a story like this and challenging me to write one. For those reading – please know this story may not take you where you want to go. But I hope it takes you nonetheless.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/

* * *

><p>"I thought you died."<p>

There is something raw and vicious in Castle's voice, something she has never heard before.

It's been twenty-one days since she was shot at Captain Montgomery's funeral, twenty-one days since the bullet went high into her shoulder, just nicking the edge of the Kevlar vest she wore underneath her dress uniform, twenty-ones days since she did not die.

It was a perfect shot, it was a kill shot, and it almost succeeded.

The bullet that was meant for her heart passed high into her shoulder. It cracked several layers of Kevlar and slid into her flesh in fragments. It made for a long surgery, and it made learning to shoot again a trying ordeal, but the puckered wounds have healed quickly with treatment. Her body has followed more slowly with endless sessions of physical therapy. The doctors predict a full recovery – after all, it's been little more than some dark stitches in her skin, some antibiotics, and a few days of rest – so they don't understand her disbelief. Things like stitches can't hold everything together.

And some wounds never heal.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She is back at her desk by the beginning of June. She can't stay away.<p>

The heat is sticky in New York, and it's hotter than usual. Thermometers blaze, and crime skyrockets. The scabs around the closing holes in her flesh itch, and she is wild trying not to scratch at the new skin.

She goes because the 12th is in chaos. There is no time for grief. She has always been the strong one, and everyone is counting on her now. She can't let them down.

Besides, there is paperwork to fill out, health insurance to claim. Besides, there is a family, not of blood or genes, but one nonetheless, that needs her leadership, her guidance, her strict definition of what a hero is. Besides, there are murders that never stop, and right now, she needs something she can solve, as opposed to all the things she can't. She needs something real, something she can control, and she knows how to do this because she's been doing it for so long she doesn't know how to do anything else.

She knew this would change them from the very beginning, change them all in fundamental and irrevocable ways. The trauma for all of them was like a bruise. They wouldn't see the effects until later, when the spilled blood blossomed under their skin. Perhaps, she thought, they had all escaped the big injuries so easily that they had forgotten how much the small ones hurt. Now she looks over the team and sees more fractures than unity, not least between her and Castle.

She sits at her desk. Castle sits beside her. He says nothing.

She thinks everything that happened should have brought them closer together, but it hasn't. Instead, it's pushed them further apart. She understands that there is a rift between them now, a crack that mars everything else. In truth, it began long before Montgomery's death, before the heated argument in her apartment, before her first date with Josh.

For four months, she had a staring contest with the devil, and Castle thought she could come away unscathed. He's always thought that crime is only the kind he writes, the kind that you can close the book on. Now he's only beginning to realize how wrong he's been. Now he knows, as she did - no one can look into hell and come away untouched.

They act like it isn't there, but it is. It's like a blister, waiting to pop. She keeps turning to him for support, because she doesn't know how she can manage this on her own – Ryan's tears, Esposito's anger, Lanie's despair, her father's confusion, Alexis' fear – but he isn't there. Or rather, he is but he isn't.

So they don't talk about it, just like they don't talk about everything else – the kiss they shared, or the moment when their bodies began to freeze against each other in death. They don't talk about the words he said to her in the cemetery, or what she might have said to him afterwards if she only she took the chance. They don't talk about it, and that makes it just that much worse.

"Stop," Castle finally manages one day, after making her a fifth Americano on her third sleepless night.

"I can't stop," she says without slowing. "What else would I do?"

"Have a life," he answers. He's invited her to book signings, press events, movie premieres, even the European Nikki Heat tour. He has events in London, Tokyo, Rome, tickets for Cannes and Sundance, any place that isn't here, any place where she could just be with him and pretend none of this ever happened.

"What kind of life would that be?"

He has no answer.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/

* * *

><p>They're in the car, driving, when it happens.<p>

"You knew, didn't you?"

She turns to look at him, feeling the slightest of twinges in her shoulder. Her shot is better, almost as good as it had been, but there are parts of her that will never be the same again.

Castle turns to her, and she can smell his cologne, the woody heady scent of it.

"In the hangar, that morning – " he breaks off, as she watches him put the pieces together in his head, the pieces from the first time they had been there, not the second, not at night when it had all gone down. He thought back to the beginning, without thinking of the end.

"I saw the bullet holes in the chopper, and you asked why now," he says. "I asked what had changed."

She waits.

"I said that transfers and courtroom breakouts take time to plan, but that wasn't it."

He looks up at her and she sees straight into his blue eyes.

"You said, what if there's something else, another reason." He breathes. "There was, wasn't there? Because you already knew, didn't you? Montgomery confided in you, and Lockwood found out."

He remembered asking then if she had been ok, and she had turned, head full of glossy curly hair, and lied to his face. Yeah, she had answered.

He remembers Montgomery telling him about meeting Kate for the first time, scouring details of her mother's case in the evidence locker. He remembers the forceful way Montgomery had told him even a captain couldn't make Beckett stand down, that the only one who could was Castle himself. He sees it all plainly now – the partnership behind the scenes, the way Beckett crumbled and Montgomery fell, how it all had a pattern of being planned as if it had been part of a book. He had gone to her apartment that night, and she had asked why he hadn't just called.

It was then he saw how far it had gone, how broken she already was, the fractures in the way she stood, moved, talked. And after three years, he had asked her to walk away and she refused. It had been so carefully orchestrated. If she wouldn't walk away for him, when he asked her, Montgomery and Lockwood could be sure there was nothing that would make her, perhaps nothing short of a bullet.

The old deal was that Beckett stayed alive as long as Montgomery held her leash. When Montgomery broke that and told Beckett what he knew, there had been a new deal. That was why she hadn't been surprised when Ryan and Esposito had sent the message to her phone, telling her what she already knew. Montgomery told her more then, that night, as he had promised her, filling in all the gaps but one. The one she most desperately wanted to know – the name she needed.

Castle knew now that was why she didn't fight him when he pulled her away. She already knew what was going to happen. She hadn't – couldn't – make peace with it, but she let it happen. That's why she didn't run when the gunshots started, but when they ended.

"You knew," he says again.

She says nothing. She keeps driving.

When they arrive at the precinct, they get out as if nothing has been said.

Castle doesn't follow her inside.

Now, finally, he understands.

When you look for the devil, the devil looks into you.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It was hot that day, so hot it made her makeup run, making the mascara sticky on her lashes, soaking her back through with sweat, heat, and fear and the knowing of what was to come, the bullet with her name on it the way Montgomery had met his. She, perhaps, was not as brave.<p>

The Kevlar vest was heavy over her shoulders.

"You knew," Castle says to her again, after he goes to her apartment that night, desperate for answers. "You knew you were going to get shot."

"Yes," she finally answers.

He has no response for this, doesn't even know how someone could, to be able to approach death so cavalierly. But Castle remembered the blood, the bright poppy red on her white gloves, artificially red. How sticky it was on his hands as he held her, how coppery it smelled in the hot sun. She hadn't fought, and there was no shock in her eyes, just acceptance, almost a calm, as her lashes fell, and with it, his heart.

"Yes," she says again. "I knew, Montgomery knew. Montgomery knew if he died and Lockwood died that the man responsible for killing my mother would come after me."

Standing there on her doorstep, she tells him everything he doesn't want to know. How Montgomery finally confided in her. How he went to his death only knowing she would survive hers.

"Only I was shot and the gunman got away, and now I'm left with nothing, again."

He understands it wasn't supposed to end like this, that when Kevlar absorbed the shot meant for her heart, she was supposed to rise up and finally pin down the man who had now shot two Beckett women. But it didn't work that way, and he wonders if perhaps the shot was only meant as a warning, one she isn't taking.

"How could you not tell me?" he asks. The anger is gone, and in its vacuum against this new sadness, she wishes for it back. There's a silence between them, and they reel in its wake.

"I didn't tell anyone," she says. "I couldn't." But in her heart she knows that's a lie. The words are lop-sided, lumpy in her mouth, and they come out all wrong. In that moment, those seconds, she feels the world, the world that he has so painstakingly tried to make for them, slip away from her.

She remembers his face over hers, his hands cupped over her shoulder as it bled, though there was little loss. The wounds, after being dug clean for shrapnel, flared across her shoulder like red lily-flower. A piece of the bullet had caught the chain of her necklace and shattered it, leaving nothing but tiny gold fragments and broken hopes.

"Where is the ring?" she asks.

He reaches into his pocket and comes back with his hands clenched. His knuckles are white.

She pries her mother's ring from his opened palm. There are dark half-moons where his nails have bit into his own flesh. She holds the circlet as if it might save her. He doesn't understand that this is her life, what she's devoted her life to. She can't give in, she can't give it up, not now, not even for him, not even if she wanted to.

"I thought you died."

There is something raw and vicious in Castle's voice, something she has never heard before.

"Stop, Kate," he begs again.

"I can't," she answers in return. He's asking her to choose, and she does.

She reels against him, and he's only marginally steadier. They hold on to one another, and when she kisses him, she tastes only the scratch of his rum against the whisky on her tongue, the sticky bitterness of their mouths.

Suddenly things like devils and death, like blood and lies, don't matter anymore. Now there was only this, them, two broken and shattered people.

They pull at each other's clothes, the seams of their selves turning inside out as they rush against each other. It isn't like they fit, but that they find every edge of each other that doesn't, every sharp edge that cuts open both their souls. Everything is a beat off as they tangle in the darkness of her bedroom, struggling for breath. It doesn't feel like coming together, but like coming apart.

She feels his fingers against her neck, the calluses of his thumbs strumming the veins that carry blood to her heart. She feels him press in, so that the beat pounds against him, so her very life squeals around him. He doesn't touch the rough surface where bullet fragments have torn asunder the flesh of her shoulder. But by then they're moving, creating another beat, another rhythm, and when it breaks, sharp and sudden, they fall against each other as if they won't ever stop.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She wakes alone, to a headache and an unnaturally cheerful sun. She moves gingerly, and finds him waiting.<p>

The room is bright with light and there's a cup of coffee in front of him but he isn't drinking it. In fact he's so still, he makes the room spin around her.

How much has she wanted this, to find him in her mornings. But when she dreamed about it, it was never like this. It never hurt.

Castle looks up only when she says his name. He looks up from the stacks of case files on her table, from the shards of her murder board, the piles of pages which will not bring her mother back and which only takes her away from him.

"I can't live without you," he says, but there is no joy in his voice.

She winces. Finally he's gotten through her armor, her walls, every barrier she's thrown up between him and her heart, and his words break her more thoroughly than anything else, any pain or loss from her mother's case, ever could.

"But I can't live with you either." He rises and she thinks how he looks in the mid-morning light, the way the stubble on his cheek glistens grey-brown in the sun, how the edges of light make the creases under his eyes look even deeper. If she looks closely, she can see the stain of tears on his skin. "Not like this."

"I can't watch you die," he whispers and he motions over the strewn papers. "Not again, not ever."

Her heart pounds in her chest, and fear makes her dizzy. The world shifts, but she doesn't go with it. He has begged her to stop, but she realizes too late that the stop is his.

"Castle, what are you doing?" she asks. Her knuckles are white, curled over the back of the chair.

"I'm doing exactly what you told me to," he answers, and his beautiful voice is laced with the bitterness she heard when he stood in these rooms last, when they argued about things never said.

"I'm getting out."


	2. Downhill at Dusk

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 2: Downhill at Dusk

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash.

Rating Note: T, for some violence

Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter. Your comments and support are amazing. I've had some trouble responding to feedback so if you prefer to email directly, please do so at elliottsilver at yahoo dot com. Also - Please know that though these first chapters are black, this story is not all about darkness, but light too. In the next chapters, dawn breaks.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She turns to work because she has nowhere else to turn.<p>

But she doesn't know _how_ to work without him, and it's like she can't. Three years of working with a nine year-old on a sugar rush have inured her to silence. And suddenly there is far too much of that, at the precinct, from her friends, in her rooms. It's alien having only her own thoughts to contend with.

She hadn't told anyone what happened, but somehow they know. They know that Castle is gone even if they don't quite know why. In truth, she can't believe he's really gone. She waits for him to appear, but he never does.

She feels numb, or, at least that's what she tells herself. Empty might be a better word, but she's forced herself to stop thinking now, and it shows, especially on the job. She misses things, lets details slide, hardly notices when facts add up, when the way is right in front of her. She feels as if she's grasping at straws, she's feels as if she's gasping for air.

She knows that Ryan thinks she doesn't care, but that's not it exactly. She thinks Esposito is giving her the benefit of the doubt, but only because he really doesn't know and that's something he's never seen in her before.

It doesn't help that she can't sleep, because when she does she wakes up thinking he is still there. And that hurts worse than any dark dream. So she drinks coffee in the morning, and whisky at night, finds blue pills to sleep and white ones to stay awake, and that gets her through, for now.

But she can't think straight, and when she tries, the pieces only fall further apart. She stares at the murder board endlessly, but nothing makes sense. She pores over the ballistic report for the bullet that pierced her shoulder until her head swims, and she re-lives every detail of Montgomery's death put into print form. She reads the papers every night, but the words never change and there are no new leads. At work, her case goes unsolved, then another, and finally a third. She's been given a warning, her first ever official reprimand.

She feels herself spiraling, whirling further and further out of control, but when she calls Castle, to apologize, to talk to him, to tell him all the things she needs to, he doesn't answer. His phone has been disconnected, and the number she is trying to dial is out of service. She is instructed to try again, but she doesn't know how.

It begins to sink in how gone he is.

She cries when she comes in the next morning and the cleaners have shined her desk. She reaches past the line of nesting dolls to where his thumbprint had been etched in chocolate on the wood surface, where she had been able to see the whirls and lines of his thumb, a rush of a life against the fake graining. She remembers his fingers against her throat in the darkness, feeling her life against his hands. Now even the smallest trace of him is gone, wiped clear as if he had never been there at all.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The summer blisters with heat, but she doesn't feel it.<p>

She sits at her desk and stares at his empty chair.

After nine days, she remembers he was scheduled to go back to LA for the second set visit of the Nikki Heat movie, where filming is wrapping. After seventeen days, she checks his publisher's webpage and finds he's away on the Heat Rises tour, to promote the new paperback. After forty-two days, she calls Martha who is in Vancouver filming what she calls the next big thing. His mother knows he's gone to London to see Alexis off for her summer session at Oxford. Alexis rigorously updates her Facebook page but Castle's feed is strangely silent. By August when Alexis returns she sends her a short email. Alexis only sends back a guarded reply saying that her father is working his way through Europe. She says no more.

Suddenly she begins to wonder if Castle is ever coming back, and she realizes, too keenly, she's already felt this way before. That was last summer.

He'll be back in the fall, she reassures herself. It's what she tells Esposito and Ryan. But August turns into September, September into a blazing October, October into a freezing November. It's fall and he isn't back.

She doesn't have to guess why. She sees pictures of him, dapper and charming, in the glossy tabloids she claims she doesn't read. He posts pictures of the extended book tour across Europe, stopping to promote the new Nikki Heat movie at the premieres in Rome and Cannes. His arm is always around Natalie's back, her shoulder, they are always standing against each other, as if they can't stand to be apart, leaning towards a perfect center of dazzling smiles.

The grief comes, and with it dark things like guilt. She's held it all back until now. Everything she worked so hard for has shattered, and now she can't stop anything from breaking, not even her heart.

Her mother's ring bobs against her chest, its new chain effortlessly light and perfect.

Castle has left her with nothing but this, everything she thought she wanted.

Only now, too late, she realizes it isn't.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The new captain introduces herself at a press conference before the city. There are more photographers than at a Richard Castle book-signing. The new captain is glossy and professional, her blonde hair the careful color of sunshine, her nails perfectly buff and trim, her suits tapered and tailored to every lustrous curve of her body. She hasn't spent a minute on the streets, but she's spent years in law school and looks rapturous on TV.<p>

Elisa Chenault appears at the precinct in a whirl of Chanel fragrance that gives Beckett a headache, or rather, it makes worse the one the whisky started. Beckett watches her walk into the office that once belonged to Roy Montgomery, leaving the voluminous staff trailing behind her to follow. People used to ask why it didn't become her office, but after these last months, no one asks anything of her anymore. They have all realized that the explanation hurts far more than the not knowing.

It isn't too much to say that Kate immediately despises this new leader. She's everything she once wanted to be, in the place she hoped to get.

"You need a partner," the blonde says, when her willowy assistant ushers Kate into the office which now smells like lemon verbena and Perrier.

"I have one," she answers, because regardless of everything that's happened, she still thinks she does.

The captain stares at her. She has eyes like malachite, sharp and sensuous.

"No, you don't."

Elisa takes a folded paper from her desk drawer, and hands it to Kate. Kate stares at her. She doesn't understand, and she wishes now she hadn't seen this blow coming.

The letter is printed on thick cardstock, and she opens it slowly. According to the print, Richard Castle has voluntarily severed all connection with the New York City Police. She checks the date and realizes the strong, bold slashes in his inked signature – the one she knows by heart from all the autographs in the books on her shelves – had been made the morning he left her apartment, the morning he told her he was getting out.

She hadn't believed him then, but now, she thinks she might. She crumbles the paper into an oddly trapezoidal mess, ignoring the slashes of paper cuts bleeding against her palms.

Kate gets up and walks out without looking back.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She finds her way to a cop bar, one she remembered from her first years on the force, when she went to drive away the crumbling dreams of her mother. Royce had showed her. She goes in, swamped in darkness and voices. She motions for a whisky because it's all they have and all she wants is to forget. She forces herself not to retch as she drinks. She orders, orders again, then once more. The whisky stings her throat, burns her empty stomach, unravels her. Someone offers her a cigarette and she accepts. The smoke curls in her belly and makes her feel sick. She asks for another. An Irish band is playing in the corner, and she realizes she knows the song. "I don't care if your heroes have wings, your terrible beauty's been torn." She doesn't realize she's crying until someone asks if she's ok. She stumbles out with her head up, because it's the least she can do really against the cacophony of sound behind her.<p>

She'd once told Castle, you show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

How right she was.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The following weeks at the precinct are nothing short of tragic.<p>

She forgets when she tells Ryan and Esposito to make calls or track financials. She ruins a squad car when she runs a red light and is hit so hard that safety glass crackles all over her. She is sent for remedial training when she forgets to file the case notes for a murder suspect, and the technicality forces them to let him walk. At home the papers of her mother's case files surround her so that she can't see out, but they make no sense. Nothing makes sense.

She arrives at work with whisky on her tongue. She ignores orders. She stares at the seat where Castle used to sit.

She tackles a suspect running away, sending him flying into a brick wall. The wall wasn't the problem; it was the four punches she threw when he was down.

She is given a four-day suspension.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>In this midst of it all, his new book appears.<p>

It's glossy and flashy and so very Rick Castle she could cry. The title is marbled across the cover, _Heat Storm_. He released the news over the summer and the publishers been promoting it for months, taking advantage of the fever-pitch of interest in all things Nikki Heat.

He does not send her an advance copy, but nor has he answered any phone calls, emails, or texts she's sent him either. The subject of the book is top-secret, and there were no hints on the Castle website, not even press information from the publisher. No one knows what happens, least of all her.

His books have helped her out of a dark place before, and she turns to them now for the same thing.

She waits in line at a Barnes and Noble before it opens and is the third person to purchase a copy at the registers. She sits in her car, holding this startling blue-black thing in her lap. This is Castle, here, if only his words. Finally she opens it. There is no dedication this time, and as she skims through and flips to the ending, she knows why. She puts it down very carefully.

Slowly she puts the keys in the ignition, but her hands are shaking as she drives to the precinct.

She hears her phone before she even gets off the elevator.

She ignores it, but she can't ignore her heart.

Nikki Heat is dead. And Derek Storm, returned from the apparently deceased, has killed her.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>Esposito tells her their murder suspect is in interrogation. She knows the perp well, has seen him much too often in these rooms, so she goes to work.<p>

She walks in and sits across from him. Her eyes still smart from the sting of flashbulbs, from the photographers waiting outside the station. Everyone has questions, but Castle isn't talking and only she has answers.

"Why?" she asks.

"Why not?" he answers. The suspect's name is Derrick Simpson and she remembers the last time he had been in this room, Castle had been beside her. He'd been the one to stop her then, to put his hand over hers when the suspect taunted them, to restrain her when she rose to pummel him. He'd been accused of strangling his girlfriend then. Now he was accused of shooting one.

"Why did you kill her?" She persists as he leans back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head. The links of the handcuffs jingle, as the edges of the chair legs scrape against the floor. The sound screeches in her ears.

"Who said I did?"

"Who else would?" she counters. She lays out pictures on the table in front of them.

"She left you," Kate answers him. "She chose, and it wasn't you."

"So what."

"So everything."

This Derrick leans forward, straining across the table towards her.

"Is that why you're alone?"

She leans back, away.

"Don't think I didn't notice," this Derrick continues. "That writer, the one that looked at you so nice, he's not here anymore."

She knows she shouldn't feel like this, like screaming, but it's true and that doesn't make it hurt any less.

"We are talking about murder," she counters. "We have your phone records. We have the call she placed to you less than three hours before you went to her apartment and shot her. We have your thumbprint in blood on her desk. We have the call where she told you she was leaving you."

"Is that what he told you?" This Derrick leans back, unruffled. The conversation is going nowhere fast, and she feels it – like everything else – spinning effortlessly out of control.

"He didn't tell me anything," she says, but she knows that they are lying to each other. This Derrick smiles at her. He knows it too well.

"Why?" she tries again. "You didn't need to kill her because she left." She thinks of Nikki Heat, of the way the other Derek killed her, the way Castle's words bled across the page. He didn't need to kill her.

"She loved you," she says.

"Did she?" he asks. "If she loved me, then she wouldn't have left."

This Derrick pauses and looks at her. "Just like if he loved you, he wouldn't have left either."

She kicks out the bottom of his chair, sending him sprawling onto the floor. The table falls and pictures of the victim, young and dark-haired and smiling, fly out. She kneels over him, smashing her knee into his chest so hard that the air pops from his lungs. He is laughing at her even as she pulls her gun, but then she unlatches the safety and a strange terror fills his eyes.

The mirrored glass splinters outward over their heads as she lifts her hand above her and presses the trigger. The bullet explodes and he ducks, but she doesn't and she can feel wisps and edges crackle against her skin.

This Derrick confesses quite freely now, and very quickly, but it's too late. Black-clad officers rush in, just steps behind Esposito, who stands like a shadow in the doorway. They take her gun and she is the one frog-marched in ignominy, not triumph, from the room.

She has been tried, and found wanting. She has been pushed beyond the limits of her strength. She needed him, she needed Castle, and he was not here.

The captain is already walking towards them in the hallway, through the clusters of people. They meet and the collision is less than she expected. The blonde reaches for Beckett's badge, strung around her neck on a chain, the visible part of the weight around her neck the way her mother's ring, on its delicate gold chain, is not. After Montgomery had died and Castle had left, it had been Esposito that had put the badge over her head, strung onto her the way he usually wore his. He had been the one to hold her steady, but he couldn't do it alone. The captain pulls the badge over her head with a sweep, and suddenly its weight is gone.

There are no words, at least not now. Those will come later, in carefully worded legal documents on heavy paper that must be signed and sealed and processed.

Now there is only this, silence, nothing.

There is a hush, sucking at her like a vacuum, as she walks, strictly escorted, to the elevators. When the doors ding, the sound rattles in her head as she gets in for the last time.

She remembers telling Castle she was a one and done girl.

Now, suddenly, she is done.


	3. Swirl and Ache

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 3: Swirl and Ache

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash.

Rating Note: T, for some adult situations

Author's Note: This is a difficult story, both to read and write, so I am grateful beyond expression for your support. As darkness engulfs, you may find that light comes from many sources, sometimes unexpected, but always remember that it will turn out the way it should in the end. And if it is not the way it should be, then it is not the end.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She doesn't remember much of the next five weeks. She remembers there was an internal investigation, and they took away her gun. She remembers watching two workmen replace the mirrored window in the questioning room before she was called in to see the captain and chief of police. She remembers Castle wasn't there.<p>

Christmas passes, then snow, then ice.

She has some money, so she doesn't look for another job right away, even though she gets several lucrative offers. She doesn't want the kind of money being thrown at her now, to give interviews, to write a book, to tell her story. She doesn't want to do the morning talk shows and she doesn't want to pose in _Playboy_. She doesn't want to talk about Richard Castle and she doesn't want to talk about Nikki Heat. She doesn't want anything except to be left alone, which she is not.

There are photographers everywhere, especially in those first few weeks, shooting with long-angle lenses from the buildings across the street, posing as deliverymen from florists and Chinese restaurants she has never heard of, calling her night and day when she least expects it. She stops answering the door, and she unplugs her landline. She hangs dark curtains over her windows and blocks out all traces of light. She waits, in the dark.

She knows she needs to escape, but she doesn't know how or where.

She feels caged, and when she finally sneaks out, she finds grainy pictures of herself staring out of tabloid magazines with bloodshot eyes and dark circles like craters, so tired and worn that she hardly recognizes herself. She goes home, locks the door, and cries.

Trapped in this small space, she's left to her own devices, and her own pity, so she turns to drinking because it's easy and the liquor store is three blocks closer than the grocery. She drinks more than she should, but it's easier than cooking and cheaper than take-out, and the headache when she wakes is more than worth the few hours of restless sleep she eventually gains.

When she wakes, she sits in her apartment and stares at the trails of papers posted to her walls, the remnants of her mother's case and Montgomery's death. She's desperate to make sense of it all, and the more she tries, the farther it spins out of control. She has once fallen inside herself this way, but now, again, she doesn't have the strength to come out. She doesn't have the strength to stop. She knows people are concerned about her, but they don't seem to understand that she can't deal with their solicitous concern right now, maybe not ever. So she pushes them away, one by one. First Lanie, then Ryan and Esposito, then her father.

They want to forgive her, but she can't forgive herself. They do not understand something that only Castle could.

Her life is not a book, and what she's done cannot simply be written out.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>There is a knock at her door one night. It's not even late – she can still see the edges of the sun as it falls behind the earth – but she's been drinking for several hours now, staring at pieces of paper until her world – mercifully - blurs.<p>

She stands quickly and nearly loses her balance. She stumbles and almost falls in her haste.

"Castle – " she begins, but stops as she throws open the door.

Esposito stands there, unsure and nervous.

"I just wanted to tell you in person," he says. "Ryan's leaving."

"Leaving," she echoes.

"He turned in his badge."

She nods. It has come to this.

"You?" she asks.

He shakes his head. He will stay until the end, if not longer.

She doesn't know what else to say so she holds out her hand. "Good luck."

He doesn't take it, and so she lets it fall back to her side. He hands her a large package and leaves. It has her name on it, from the precinct. The cardboard disintegrates as she rips into it and she pulls out her old police uniform, still stained with blood and tagged with forensic markers. She runs her fingers over the crunchy edges of the stiff shoulder seams, pokes her fingers through the frayed holes.

She remembers that day, the way Castle spoke to her, the way his words bled over her from his heart, leaving holes in hers.

She drops the whole thing into the trash and walks out.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She goes because she can't stay away, but when she gets there, his rooms are dark and there is a Sotheby's sign in the window. Castle would say that darkness is only the absence of visible light, and she has never felt that more than now, as she stands alone on the pavement outside his apartment.<p>

Now that she is here, she knows that she should have come sooner.

She sits on the steps and dials the number of the realtor, who answers on the first ring. It's true, she finds out, Richard Castle is selling his loft. In fact, the whole family has already moved out to Los Angeles, where (the agent discreetly, if excitedly, tells her) the word is that the second Nikki Heat movie has already been green-lit and the next Derek Storm novel is in the works.

"Why Los Angeles?" she remembers asking, since she didn't much like the city when she'd been there, and didn't think he had either.

"So he can be with his fiancée," the realtor answers.

"His fiancée?"

"Of course," the woman answers as if she should know. "Natalie Rhodes."

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It is nearly April and the weather is icy. Kate hasn't been out of her apartment in days. She stares at the trails of paper in her stale rooms, flung helter-skelter across her floor, her furniture, her fixtures. Shreds of cellulose linger on her table, ripped as angels' wings. This is all that's left of her mother's murder, of her case, these bits of paper, these edges of photographs, these fragments of words. She's torn them from her window, from her walls, as if she could tear them from her heart, but she's memorized every last detail, breathed it so deep into her soul that she can't breathe it out. She tries to think, to move on, but it's difficult to do without the resources of the department, almost impossible without the aid of a partner.<p>

Castle has always been the one to steady her, to counter her sharp edges of brilliance. Now she teeters, and for her, the descent has been no less terrifying than this crash, this awful crush of alone, and of left behind, this bitter nothing of being once-loved.

She goes to the kitchen for a drink, but realizes there is nothing left. She throws a glass across the room in frustration, but it's plastic and only bounces off the window with a clang and rattle.

The counter is littered with take-out boxes and empty bottles. She searches until she finds a finger's worth of Sapphire left in a too-blue bottle, and then she palms a desiccated lime from her windowsill. She reaches for the knife to cut it, but it slips in her fingers and she jumps as it clatters to the floor.

The sound echoes in her head.

Slowly she picks the knife up and stares at the blade. It's long and silver and glints in the half-shadowed light of her kitchen.

The news of Castle's engagement has been hard, but no more so than the media frenzy that followed, the endless news stories chronicling how a writer finally got everything he ever wanted, because Nikki Heat was everything he dreamed, because Natalie was all he envisioned. She sees him on tv, smiling, but that's not the Castle she remembers.

She remembers Damian Westlake instead, the way Castle had refused to stop believing in his friend, the way she had told him then that the person he wanted to remember existed only in his imagination, like a character in his books, like Derek Storm, like Nikki Heat. She had meant him to see that such things weren't real, but perhaps they were better than real. Perhaps they were real _enough_.

She tests the point of the knife against the skin of her arm. She presses on it, like she is a rind, and the sharp point pricks inward. A bubble of red spits out from the paleness of her arm. It's incongruous that such colors come from her body, like the bright blinding burst of red that spilled from her shoulder. She remembers that day, and she remembers the night they spent together. She remembers Castle's hands holding her, the pressure of his touch, the way he felt for her pulse, the beat of her heart against his skin.

She stares at the veins in her wrist, how they branch upward toward her palm like trees. Under her skin they are blue-green, the color of the ocean, the color of sleep.

She closes her eyes.

Her world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The knocking, like a hurricane, does not stop.<p>

It continues in her head long after the real pounding has stopped, after she has finally roused herself from a misshapen lump on her couch.

Jordan Shaw walks into her rooms without a word. The FBI agent takes in the rumpled clothing, the empty bottle of gin on the table, the havoc of torn paper, the spoiled milk and sweat smell that lingers over the reek of pad thai. She sees the kitchen knife, long and silver and sharp, lying perfectly parallel along the edge of the coffee-table.

Jordan moves the curtains and stands in the cool sunshine. She lets it reflect off her, the red shine of her hair, the slick fabric of her navy suit. Kate hasn't seen her in two years, but she glows, and Kate realizes that sometimes light comes from the most unlikely of sources, as does darkness.

"How did you know?" she asks.

"How could I not?" Jordan answers.

The tears – her first – come without warning. She can't stop them, though she doesn't even know what she is crying for, exactly. But Jordan steps forward and holds her, and amazingly, she doesn't let her fall.

Held, finally, she cries until she has no tears left.

"Kate," Jordan says, and her voice is firm and gentle. "Is this what your mother would have wanted for you?"

There's an agonizing moment, and then she answers. "No."

"But Castle – "

"Isn't coming back," Jordan finishes, as efficiently as always.

"Whatever there was – or wasn't – between you two, he's gone now, and you've thrown away your career over him."

Kate blinks and stares at her, though she sees somewhat double. "Forgive me, but aren't you the one that told me, "he cares for you Kate"? You said maybe I wasn't ready, but that it was there."

"Sure," Jordan answers. "But love doesn't hold still, it doesn't stay forever just because you want it to."

She hands Kate a business card.

"Come see me."

It is cardstock thick and engraved with golden seals and whirls. _Federal Bureau of Investigation._ The words rise off the paper under Kate's fingers. It holds possibilities, maybe even promises.

"Why?"

Jordan stares at her.

"Because you were a good cop, maybe even a great cop, long before you met Castle, and I think most days you forget that."

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/


	4. To Feel the Earth

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 4: To Feel the Earth

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up.

Rating Note: T

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It's a Tuesday and the forecasters are predicting a spring storm, so she has an umbrella looped around her arm when she finally goes. From the darkness of her apartment, she has realized there is nothing left for her here, nothing but dead-ends, memories, and heartbreak. Her father understands, Lanie doesn't. In the end, there is little from this life, her life, that she takes with her. In fact, she can fit everything into her car. It is a five-hour drive in rush hour traffic on 95 to Washington, DC.<p>

She twirls the business card between her fingers as she waits in gridlock.

Her stomach churns, and her head aches. She wants a drink.

"Agent Shaw," she greets the women before her as they meet again. The building they are in, located on the corner of Pennsylvania and 9th, is no less impressive than this woman before her.

"Jordan," she corrects, smiling and taking Kate's hand. "You only demand the title from certain people, and you aren't one of them."

Jordan leads Kate into her office, a space so beautiful and perfect it's obvious she hardly uses it. Kate walks in slowly, taking in the sharp almost sterile lack of clutter, the flurry of framed commendations on the eggshell walls. For a second her heart stops, before it thumps on again. Her commendations lie, taped like a jigsaw, at the bottom of a box in her father's basement. She remembers the broken glass of the wood frames, the way it crackled under her feet when she threw them to the ground and listened to the shatter, of glass no less than herself. She misses being a cop, misses it with a frustration that borders on despair, yet she knows she can never go back. She has burned those bridges, obliterated them so completely she isn't even sure where they once stood. She has hit a bottom so deep she can't fathom it, so dark she can't remember light.

Jordan waits until she talks first.

"I need help."

It hurts to admit it, but it's true. She can't do this alone. It's been almost a year since she was shot, since Richard Castle walked out of her life, or what little was left of it. Jordan laces her hands together, as neat as macramé, as she sits back in her chair.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Jordan pushes her.

"Yes," she answers, and she isn't lying. What she wanted was in New York, but he didn't want her. It has taken nearly a year to accept that, even if she can't understand it.

"It won't be easy," Jordan cautions.

"I know." The enormity, the finality, of it all scares her, but she has hit rock bottom, and she has come to realize that she can either reach for the knife or she can rise up. She has considered the knife already.

Jordan hands Kate a thick folder emblazoned like her card - _Federal Bureau of Investigation. _

"You'll be working in Violent Crimes."

Kate finds she can't say anything, can't even imagine what Jordan has done to arrange this. She is damaged, broken, and only Jordan who has seen pure evil could think that doesn't much matter, only Jordan who still believes in her when she doesn't even believe in herself.

Jordan walks her to the door, and Kate looks at this woman with new eyes. Montgomery had said that if you were very lucky you found someone to stand with you, but in all her years, she had never once thought that person would not be Castle.

Now, suddenly, she is grateful it isn't.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It's grueling, those first ten weeks at Quantico. She can't sleep and when she does, she wakes with every part of her body in pain. The training is rigorous, the schedule hellish, the instructors demons.<p>

"You wanted this," Jordan reminds her and Kate realizes she did, she does. She doesn't want escape, she wants work. So she's stops drinking and she throws out the little bottles of pills. She attends weeks of abuse meetings, pushes herself through rehab. She stops crying when yet another recruit mocks her, when the instructors roar at the shots she misses on the range. She starts sassing back, she starts hitting the target. She stops being a cop and starts to become an FBI agent. She refuses to quit.

So she makes it, graduates from training, and gets to move to DC.

After New York, DC seems like a backwater. It doesn't really feel like a city but rather a set of glum building blocks randomly assembled. The new city is deathly muggy in the summer, and she hates that. It ruins her hair, her clothes. But like all things, she gets used to it, to the tall drab government buildings, to the too-important people rushing about in expensive suits, to the floppy interns that flood happy hours and puke on the metro, to the frantic work hours and rush hour traffic. She cuts her hair and she buys suits and shoes without a four-inch heel. She sits alone in her apartment and eats. She watches the sun fall beneath the edge of the earth, and she watches it rise again.

She is not welcomed into her new job. She's the rookie here, and it's hard to swallow the fact that now she makes the coffee for everyone else. It's so different when you're the one bringing coffee, not the one receiving it. She misses not having her coffee made for her, or delivered into her hands a crime scene. She misses bear claws, the sticky-chewy goodness of them, especially since no one in DC eats breakfast. She misses being able to do things, to break cases. Now she's operational support. Now she's the one making phone calls and running down license plates. Now she's the one checking on prints, not taking them. She's the one recording interrogations, not making them. Jordan tries to comfort her by reminding her that they caught Sam Smith, the Savannah strangler, with a parking ticket, and the Potomac killer with an ATM receipt, but it doesn't help.

She's sure she isn't going to make it when she first sees him.

"That's Chaloner," Jordan says, following her eyes as they walk back to the offices.

Niall Chaloner passes in front of them. He has dark hair and grey eyes. He's tall and maybe forties. He wears beautiful suits and walks as if he has nowhere to go and every place to be.

She watches him stride through the doors of the Hoover Building. He doesn't look at her, doesn't look at anyone. Chaloner is the best there is, everyone knows it. She sees almost nothing of him after this first glance, but she knows of him. She reads about him, his cases, his success. He's bold, decisive, brilliant. He's the director of the Violent Crimes division and leads the best team of investigative agents in the country. She wants to be there, she wants to do that. She wants to make a difference, like he does. But this isn't New York, and she feels that keenly.

She doesn't quite know how it begins really, except that she can't sleep (still), so she's taken to going in very early, when only the cleaning crews are there, when the dull whine of vacuums calms her. It is still dark and the conference room glows as she walks towards the kitchen to start the coffee. She stops and goes back, pausing at the door. She has seen Niall Chaloner and his team in here, planning and perusing, working on cases. She is drawn, riveted. She can't look away. She moves into the room and stands before the fancy electronic murder board someone has left on. She touches the board and screens of information pop up. She opens a folder and begins reading. The case surrounds her, and for the first time since leaving, she feels at home. She sifts through case notes, verifies chronology, confirms alibis. She checks witness statements, ticks off the suspects, she plans an attack she can never initiate. When it's light and the elevators start rattling, she goes to her desk and starts calling the motor vehicles department for information on pages of expired tags.

The next morning the room is dark, but she slips in anyway. In the blackness she feels for the switch and the board springs to life, bleeding brightness around her. She stands in front of it with her arms crossed, reading Chaloner's notes, his conclusions. She likes the way he writes, she likes the way he thinks, the thoroughness of it. She likes the way he parses the evil of the world, the way he pieces together broken things.

The elevator dings and she hears the footsteps of someone heading towards their office. She knows she can't be here, but she can hardly pull herself away.

It's addictive, and every night she goes to sleep, she can't wait to wake up. She wakes with adrenalin in her veins, wide awake in the darkness as she drives through the district. Sometimes when she comes in the board is covered with notes and queries and she can't read everything before other agents start arriving. Sometimes she comes in and it's all wiped blank. Then she walks away disappointed and sits at her desk drinking bitter coffee until the day begins.

She keeps going back, reading over cases she hardly relates to, except to get faxes of jail records and alibi statements. She follows cases that are not her own. It feels so far away, and it feels like she never left. She hovers in between worlds. And she thinks it might be the only way she manages to hang on.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The next day her supervisor takes her to task for failing to follow up on several requests. She knows she's fallen behind on her assigned work, the things that are not related to cases she isn't working on. But there are things more important than wire taps and parking tickets. She argues back, and doesn't even realize someone has come up behind her until he speaks.<p>

"What's going on here?"

Niall Chaloner's voice is like smoke and honey, deep and rough. It rushes over her like sandpaper and salve, as she turns to face him. Up close, he is imposing, like granite or redwood. There is a power to him that not even the elegant cut of his grey pinstripes can contain, a raw energy, edgy and elemental, that shocks even her.

Her supervisor launches into a tirade of her failures.

"Tell me," he interrupts, and she realizes he is talking to her.

"It's not him," she says. "It's his wife."

Her supervisor stares at her flap-mouthed, as she explains that Roman DiNunnzio cannot be responsible for the series of brutal murders that have been the gory highlight of news coverage for the last three weeks.

"How do you know?" Chaloner asks her.

"We tracked all phone records from the family, and we know that three calls reference the payout for the murders, two million each." His eyes are intense on hers, as he watches her.

"But we know his financials are clean, all of them."

"Yes," Kate answers him. "But his wife's aren't."

She hands him a paper and he takes it from her without looking down.

"She claims she had alibis for all three nights, so her financials were never thoroughly checked. She shares an account with her husband, but she also holds an account under her family name. There are three payments of two million, on the seventh, the twelfth, and the twentieth. Each payment directly following a murder."

He says nothing but as she watches him stride away, it's like all the energy has been sucked from the room, and she stands weakly as her supervisor glares at her, thrusting a sheaf of work at her. She wants nothing more than to follow him, but she keeps doing what they tell her. She keeps doing what has become her job, the rote mechanism of it. But she can't stay away. She comes in the next day and the murder board is clean. She wonders what happened, she wonders if she helped. She closes her eyes and breathes, and goes back to calling updates on tax evasion and bank transfers.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>This morning someone is whistling as they clean, and the board is covered again in his strong, black writing. It's dark outside the window and the world falls away in shadows. In Annapolis, three young girls have been killed in five days. She stares at their pictures, their happy gap-toothed smiles. She tries to see the bigger picture.<p>

"What do you see?"

He walks out of the shadows to her.

Up close, Niall Chaloner's grey eyes are beautiful. They remind her of storms, of wild, dangerous things, of steel traps. He stands next to her, and his body is tall and warm beside her. He vibrates, it's magnetic, and she feels it.

"I'm sorry, I should – "

"Don't apologize," he says briskly. "Tell me what you see."

So she takes a breath and tells him exactly what she sees, and when she's done, she notices that they are no longer alone.

She looks around at the faces of all the other agents, everyone on his team.

"Thank you, Agent Beckett," he says, and she moves to leave. Someone snickers at her, and Chaloner's voice snaps across the room. There is silence as she walks out, and awe, not least from herself.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It's raining, streaking along the windows, as he joins her. He's wearing a white shirt, perfectly ironed, and holding two mugs of steaming tea. He hands her one, and she takes it gratefully. He stands next to her and they stare at the murder board.<p>

"What do you see?"

The lights flare against their skin as they talk. The room smells like Darjeeling, their two mugs half-full on the table behind them as the other agents file in for the morning briefing.

"Stay," Chaloner says as she moves to leave.

She does, she has.

They see in the day together, and they see it away too. They work together, they find a rhythm. It's so much easier than she expected, but he makes it that way, so it's like it was there all along, this way they fit. He pushes her, like he does all other members on his team, sometimes to their breaking points, sometimes beyond. She pushes back. She already knows this, you can either break or you can bend.

Being here is different than New York. There are different cadences, different ways of doing things. But she learns quickly, figures it out, and moves on. There's more paperwork here, there are worse crimes. There's less margin for error. The cost is greater, but so is the reward. In New York, she helped a city; here she flies across a nation. It pushes her past the very boundaries of everything she knew, everything she believed. It's more than starting over; it's like she never really knew who this person called Kate Beckett was until she got here, until she met him, until she fell apart and he touched the bleeding quick of her Castle-battered soul.

Suddenly the world which has been whirling so frantically out of control stops, rights itself, and spins on.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/


	5. Strong Sweets

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 5: Strong Sweets

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up.

Rating Note: M, for adult content

Author's Note: Dear Readers: At the end of this chapter a familiar face appears. He will remain in the story until the end. And this story is not over yet.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She wakes up one morning and realizes she is not unhappy. It's raining (again), as always in the late DC spring. But even that can't dampen her mood. Kate hurries as she dresses, and pulls a raincoat over her head as she dashes for the car. She does not notice that the new shortness of her hair casts the striking beauty of her cheekbones into sharp relief, or that the deep cracks around her mouth have turned into happier lines, that the dark circles under her eyes have faded into pale memories.<p>

It's as if she's painstakingly created a new version of herself, and she is ok with that. As Jordan told her, it gets easier. She doesn't have to convince herself that she likes this, her life as it is. She is grateful for it, for being here.

It's dark most mornings when she arrives, but she knows where the switches are and soon the murder board glows. Chaloner will join her and she will take the cup of Nilgiri he's made for her. Together they will work and drink the tea. It has an earthy, acquired taste, but she has learned to like it too.

She likes many things about Niall Chaloner. She likes the way he says what he is thinking. She likes the way he says her name, as if she is not a martyr. She likes the way he hands her a mug of tea handle-first so she never touches the hot body of the cup. She likes the way he escorts her through doors with his hand on the small of her back.

They travel often, and she sees more of the US than she's seen in all her life before. Unfortunately most of it is in impromptu nerve centers set up in beige conference rooms or waiting at local airports in the dead of night for red-eye flights from Seattle, Denver, Orlando.

They go where the crimes are. Sometimes there are several of them travelling, almost like an entourage. But as summer turns into a rainy fall, it's usually just her and Chaloner, waiting, waiting.

Today they are not waiting. Today Chaloner is already there, tracing notes onto the flaming board. She goes to him and he smiles, as they turn to the case, as they work through the chains of evidence, the missing links in this madness. Together they stare at images so disturbing they should make her queasy, at the pieces of evil that have gathered in this world. Together they try to make sense of it.

She's been reassigned as an assisting agent to his team now, and when the rest of the agents arrive, they form an unbroken circle around the table. She has become one of them now, a part of something larger than herself, something that is whole not jagged, not haphazard. The room is thick with the smell of coffee, hazy with powdered creamer. She misses the clean scent of nut and root, the sweet of leaf and earth.

Chaloner begins with a briefing. The other agents are silent as sphinxes when he speaks. Then he turns to her, his grey eyes steady and calm, and directs her to take over.

Kate stands, and her heart flutters in her chest as she goes to the murder board. Chaloner's eyes are on her. They do not waver, and she feels the strength of his belief as she stands in the light, suddenly not alone, and remembers who she is.

She begins.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>They stay late one night, finishing a case. The other agents have long since gone home, and now it's just her and Chaloner revolving like planets around each other. It's well past one, and she feels it as she works through her third cup of Kopili Assam, but she doesn't want to leave. The tea is strong, almost bitter, as she drinks. It has long since gone cold, but the room is heady with it. Somewhere in the distance, there is thunder, and very quickly, a flash of bright white light. The weathermen have been predicting severe storms for days, maybe even flooding and hail.<p>

Chaloner moves around her, adding another folder to a growing stack on the table. They have spent hours on this case together, and only just closed it tonight. The sense of relief is palpable, but so is the weariness. She can see the strain in his muscles as he stretches, the stiff knots under the thin blue fabric of his shirt. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and she watches the way his bones move under the skin of his arm, the twist and flex of his body, as he signs the final forms and they pack everything into cardboard boxes.

A peal of thunder reverberates as the storm blows closer, and then suddenly the power goes out. Darkness rushes over them, heavy and blinding. For a moment, she is disoriented, lost again in a world of perpetual shadow. Then Chaloner says her name, and she remembers, she breathes. The emergency lights flutter dimly in the hallway. He toggles the switch but the room remains black. In the heavy silence she can hear the furious lash of rain against the windows.

She doesn't want to go home, not in this, so she slides to the floor, resting her back against the wall. He joins her, and for a long while they sit and listen to the rain, the storm.

"Why did you come here?" Chaloner asks into the darkness.

It's been a year now since she's come to DC, a year of cases and scrupulous hard work, a year of penance and purgatory, a year of learning to stand on her own two feet again. But it's been two years since Castle walked out of her door, and there is still part of her that is raw, that smarts, that stings when someone mentions it.

"You never talk about it," he continues, not unkindly.

"Neither do you," she counters. For all the time she's spent with him, she still doesn't know this man next to her, this man who drinks tea and likes to wear shirts the color of the sky, whose commendations fill corridors, who directs the way they approach death no less than grief and fear, whose name is Gaelic for champion.

It's like they are both hiding, jealously guarding the soft underbellies of their pasts.

"What do you want to know?" he finally asks.

"Everything," she answers.

After a long breath he speaks. He tells her about joining the FBI straight out of college, of working his way to field offices in Albany, Chicago, DC. He tells her about the Rappahannock case, about the Beltway sniper, about becoming deputy director for Violent Crimes. He tells her he married his high-school sweetheart, he tells her he had everything he ever wanted.

"In 2000, the FBI started following a series of small arsons in Northern Virginia. At first, they didn't seem to be important – empty buildings, old barns. But then we noticed they started to escalate – condemned apartments, disused showrooms. In 2001, there was an explosion in Reston, at a senior center. We realized that they weren't arsons but bombs. There were four more explosions that year. Fifteen people died. Four of those were agents on my team. One was my best friend."

He tells her about being there too, about the light and sound, about the way a wall of air and heat threw him fifteen feet in the air. He tells her about shattered glass and splintered metal. He tells her about the shrapnel, the blood, the way flesh can fall apart.

"I don't really remember it," he says. "My wife said to let it go, but I couldn't. As soon as I got out of the hospital, I went back. I stayed at work, I hardly came home. And when I did, she asked for a divorce."

The air is off and she can smell the heat of him, his sweat, over the clean scent of vetiver and something woodier. She can feel the rawness of him, and it hurts.

"We fought," he says finally. "I refused. And she went to work."

A peal of thunder erupts above them.

"That was September," he says. "I never saw her again. At 9:37am a plane crashed into the Pentagon, and she was gone. My last words to her were in anger."

His voice is brittle as he continues, as he tells her about the grieving, the anger, as he tells her about a resurrection no less miraculous than her own.

Outside lightning flares and the sky breaks. For the first time, Kate realizes maybe things are no less perfect for having once been broken. She speaks to him.

"My mother was murdered," she says. "They never found who did it. I became a cop because I didn't want other people to suffer the way we did. I worked my way through school and training, but I never forgot what happened. When I joined the force, I spent every extra hour pouring over her case. And then I stopped. I know I would die if I didn't." She breathes. "And then Castle came."

She tells him about Richard Castle. She tells him how she hated his presence at first, the way he pulled on her pigtails, how he was always in the way, always tagging along. Then she tells him how he began to help, how they started to solve cases together, how she started to like the coffee and the bear claws and the Russian nesting dolls on her desk. She tells him about the way Castle's words changed everything. She tells him about the press and the paparazzi, about the hullaballoo around best-selling novels. And then she tells him how Castle re-opened her mother's case, how it felt like pulling a scab off a wound, the drag and burn of it. She tells him that it was like a Pandora's box, something once opened, unable to be put down again. She tells him about being sucked in, the way she knew she would be, the way she drown in her own past. And then she tells him what she could not tell Castle, how she compromised, how she fell, how Montgomery died, how she was shot. She tells him how Castle left. She tells him about the drinking, the pills, the knife. She tells Chaloner that she loved Castle, she tells him everything.

"And now, no joy but lacks salt?" the man sitting beside her asks.

"What do you mean?" she questions.

"Misery is easy," he says finally. "Happiness you have to work at."

The world is dark around them, and she thinks she's always seen him in shadow. She realizes slowly that's because it's the only way she can see people when she's been so much in darkness herself.

"How do you do it?" she asks, at last.

"You can never get away from it," he says. "But you can learn to live with it."

She wonders if that's true, if it can be. As the storm fades, she hopes.

When the power flickers on, they look at each other, blinking away the bright lights. He rises first and offers her his hand. She takes it, and he pulls her to her feet as if it is so easy.

She doesn't let go.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The next week he asks if she'd like to get dinner. She agrees. They eat, they laugh. She smiles.<p>

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>"You've done a good job," Jordan tells her when they meet up.<p>

"At catching the bad guys?" Kate asks, half-jokingly.

Chaloner's voice echoes down the hallway. She hears her name, and like every time, there's a butterfly that beats against the sides of her heart when he does that. She smiles. She's been doing that a lot lately, and it seems very odd to feel her face moving that way.

Jordan notices, because she notices everything.

"At surviving."

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>Winter comes.<p>

There is ice on the Tidal Basin, thin slivers of it that rasp against the concrete as she walks by.

She hurts, and she is angry with herself for hurting. She has just come off a vicious week, of two cases and multiple deaths, and she feels those losses like personal failures. She knows this is her job now, her life, and yet there are nights like this one where she can't bear going home to an empty apartment, to the silence of cold rooms, where she will think about all the things she too has lost to this world.

Behind her the Jefferson Memorial glows in the dark, its white dome the color of bone. The cherry trees huddle against the chill wind. Already the winter storms have rubbed them raw and there are jagged breaks where the weight of ice and snow has fractured the long branches. Sap weeps out in sticky runners.

She too has tried to cry, but the tears only freeze to her cheeks.

The wind blows around her, and she feels its cold bite. It is late and the Tidal Basin is deserted, the thickness of night broken only by errant headlights on 395.

She stops. She can go no further. She is holding on only by the smallest of threads.

But just when she thinks she can hold on no longer, he comes through darkness towards her.

Niall Chaloner comes to her and stands beside her. For some time they stand there together without speaking, watching the lap of the water against the sharp edge of night.

"It isn't fair," she says at last.

"No, it's not." He doesn't have to say more, but he does. "Your world tilted and you ended here."

She knows he isn't really talking about the cases, but then neither is she. The latest Richard Castle book came out weeks ago. She has seen it, bright and bold and with an inscription that tears her heart. _To the incredible NR, for being there. _And she has seen Castle, large as life, on the tv screen in the conference room, holding a book signing at a Borders not three blocks from where she stood. He has come here, and just as quickly, he has left again. He hasn't come to her, or for her.

"Do you regret it?" Chaloner asks her.

She feels the intent behind the question, the very probe that barbs the depths of her soul. Yes, her world has tilted and she has ended here. But she understands something she hasn't before now, that every present only begins with the last catastrophe.

There is no going back, but there is simply going on.

"No," she answers him honestly.

"Then stop fighting," he says. "Let yourself be loved."

He is very close, so close, but he isn't touching her. His words brush against her like fireflies, little tingles of heat and light, and when she kisses him, he opens his mouth to hers, and she breathes in his warmth, his taste. She takes his hand, and they walk back along the Tidal Basin. He drives them to Georgetown, and she walks up the cobbled steps to his beautiful townhome. He unlocks the door and she follows him inside.

There are no words, because there don't have to be. They walk up the wooden stairs to his bedroom and they stand together in the dim light. She feels the earth beneath them move, and she goes with it, to him.

She unbuttons her shirt and lets it slide down her arms. His hands are warm on her chilled skin as he frees the fabric from her wrists, lets it fall to the floor. Her skin glows in the not-quite dark, and the scars on her shoulder flare in the light. They healed oddly, leaving the skin there dotted and marbled. She moves self-consciously.

"Sometimes when the world rubs against you," he whispers, "it takes off your skin."

He kisses her there, and she feels the rub of his tongue against her skin, the warmth of his mouth as he sucks at her. She closes her eyes, throwing back her head, mooring herself to him as he traces the lines of her collarbone.

He moves slowly, and when they are skin to skin, she traces the scars on his body too, the jagged slices where his skin has healed imperfectly. There are places on his back where his skin is stippled in long lashes, where he was stung by shrapnel. Yet it makes him no less beautiful. He too is imperfect and yet somehow, they fit.

She rejoices in the seamlessness.

There is no rush, no sound but their voices, as they come together, and even that is lost in the great swell that rises within them, that pulses between them, until at last they give in to it and the world rushes over them.

In the darkness their hearts rest against one another and they sleep.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>She wakes to the sun pouring in his bedroom window and a light frosting of snow on the ground. The world shimmers as she pads down the polished stairs in her bare feet.<p>

Niall is leaning against the sink, reading the _Post_. A mug of tea steams beside him.

He looks up as she comes to stand beside him in the sun. She puts her arm around him and he kisses the top of her head. There is no awkwardness.

"How did you know about me?" she asks.

A corner of his mouth ticks up in a smile as he brews her a cup of tea. "You moved notes on the board, rearranged files in the folders. I could tell someone had been there, looking over the cases."

"No," she persists. "How did you know about _me_?"

He doesn't even pause when he answers.

"You put everything in perspective," he says. "You make the picture clearer."

She has never heard someone say I love you so beautifully.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>Winter slips into a mild spring, spring into a blistering summer, summer into another blustery winter.<p>

The seasons change, and the politics, but business at the FBI rolls on merrily.

Kate breathes now and it doesn't hurt.

She has built a life here. She has built a life after Castle, without him. It wasn't easy and it was never what she had planned but she has done it. She could not have done it without Jordan, without Niall, and when she thinks of him she smiles.

She understands now what a partnership is, what it can be. She understands this interplay between work and not, how this, together, makes them stronger. How it saves the world, catches the bad guys, allows her to do all those things she promised herself she would do to make up for her mother's death. She understands that the world is bigger than New York, larger and most complicated, and that being here allows her to do more than keep it at an ever-shifting equilibrium.

She likes that, she likes what she does. She likes the nondescript FBI building, where she has a tiny cubicle desk in a large bullpen surrounded by all the other agents on the team. She likes working with Niall Chaloner, she likes being with him. She likes how they seem to bring out the best in each other, the parts of themselves they didn't even know they had. She even likes DC, the hush and murmur of it all, the rush and frenetic fervor, the oddly tuned-in and never-turned-off nature of it.

She likes that she can't imagine being anywhere else.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>"You look happy," Jordan says. They sit in Dupont Circle enjoying the first warm day of spring, carefully avoiding the hordes of tourists swarming around the blossoming trees of the Tidal Basin.<p>

"I am," Kate answers her. She smiles and it wraps around her face.

"You've done well for yourself, Kate," Jordan observes, bluntly as always. "I know it wasn't easy."

"No, it wasn't," she agrees. "But I had you. And Niall."

"Niall – " Jordan draws out his name and they both laugh.

"You work well together."

"Yes," Kate answers her, and they both laugh again.

"He's going to offer you a promotion."

Suddenly Jordan's eyes are very serious on hers.

"A promotion?"

"Special Agent privileges," Jordan says. "He wants you to be a full member on his team."

"Really?" Kate's heart leaps in her chest at the unexpected news.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" Jordan asks, and there is both surprise and confusion in her voice.

"Yes," Kate answers her, because it is now even if it never was before.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The sun is setting, reds and blues radiating over the southern sky. The weather is still cool for spring, but they are sitting on Niall's roof, letting the last rays warm them. Night will come soon, but the view is beautiful over the tiled roofs of Georgetown and she can see all the way down to the shimmering water of the Potomac river.<p>

They are laughing, she can't remember about what, as she rises to take in their wine glasses.

"Stay," he says.

"I will," Kate answers, laughing. She wouldn't think of driving now, she's already had two glasses of wine, her absolute limit since those dark days of gin and whisky, and besides where else would she go? She has been living with him for months now, so long she can't remember why she is still paying rent at her apartment. She hasn't been there in over a week, and the last time she went she found all the plants had died, withered away into dry, spiky origami that crumbled when she touched them. The food in the refrigerator was worse. In truth, it's only a place where she stores everything she doesn't want from her old life.

Chaloner takes her hand and gently pulls her around to face him. She likes his smile, she likes his grey eyes. She likes cooking together on the weekends, likes the way he wears glasses and jeans, likes falling asleep with her hand on his chest, feeling his heart beneath her palm. They have celebrated birthdays together, Christmas, toasted in the new year. They have attended ceremonies together, a colleague's wedding, even gone to the White House. He has given her a beautiful cabochon necklace, she has given him first editions of Fitzgerald. Her suits are in his closet, her shoes in his hallway, her laundry in his washer. She knows the passwords to his bank accounts, she knows where he keeps his gun. She knows what he wants if he dies. He knows all the same for her.

"No, I mean stay," he says. "Longer than tonight."

Kate smiles, and laughs.

"Are you asking me to be part of your team?"

Chaloner leans forward, so they are breaths from each other, so she can see the earnest flecks of his marcasite eyes. "Yes," he answers, seeing that she already knows his secrets, that Jordan's already told her.

"But no," he continues, and he holds her hands in his. "I'm asking you to stay, with me."

Kate sits. Suddenly she thinks she needs to.

"Stay with you?" she echoes.

"Permanently."

She opens her mouth but no answer comes out. She has moved on, she has left Castle behind the same way he left her. They have gone their separate ways and she has saved herself, she has found happiness, she has fallen in love with this man. But despite it all, there is still a part of her, and maybe now it's a very small part, that still holds on, that still hopes, that still waits. She wants to say yes to Chaloner, but she still loves Castle too.

"Think about it," Niall says in the silence and rises, taking the empty bottle inside.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The phone rings in the dark. It is Niall's. It wakes them both, but they are used to calls in the night, and Niall rolls away from her to answer it.<p>

Without the shape of his body, Kate stretches out limply and then curls under the covers waiting for his return.

She half-listens to his conversation, the depths of his voice as he responds. Niall will tell her what she needs to know, whether they need to wake and dress, or whether they can return to sleep.

"Kate," he says, and his voice seems far away in the darkness. Suddenly she is wide awake.

She turns over and sees his dark form, sitting on the edge of the bed. She moves and slides next to him, but when she touches him, he is tense.

He hands her his phone and she takes it awkwardly.

He reaches out and touches her hair, her cheek.

"There will be a phone call in a few minutes," he says. "It will be for you."

In the shadows, she does not understand, but then the phone begins to ring. Niall kisses her, just once. She reaches for him, but he moves away into the darkness. He leaves her alone with the ringing phone and she answers it.

"Beckett?"

For the first time in years, Richard Castle speaks to her.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/


	6. Bitter Bark

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 6: Bitter Bark

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up.

Rating Note: T, for some graphic descriptions

Author's Note: This is the sixth of eight chapters, the third to last, with two more still to come. I have enjoyed hearing from you all so much and your words so far have meant the world to me. Thank you all for reading, for commenting, for everything.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>They walk in and everyone looks up.<p>

It always happens that way. Something gives them away, whether it's the click of their shoes, the whisper-swish of their suits, the shine of their badges in the fluorescent light, or just the way they walk.

Something tells people they are coming, and they do, Niall first, then her and Jordan flanking him, forming a perfect spear, as if they are heading towards battle.

Sometimes they are.

People stare, but Kate understands that. It's very hard not to look at Niall Chaloner.

They walk forward to meet Elisa Chenault, who is coming towards them head-on like a comet. Even in just a few years, Kate can see that she has not aged well, and the brassy blonde that was so becoming when she was younger only makes her look worn and desperate now.

"Why are you here?" she asks bluntly, halting in the middle of the 12th's hallway as if she could possibly stop them.

"We're here for Richard Castle," Niall says.

They have caught a red-eye out of Reagan only hours ago, and Jordan who was in Boston with her team has met them at JFK. They have converged and formed a veritable small army in suits, and now they have come here.

The director of the FBI's Violent Crimes division pulls out his badge. It's a fluid movement, a snap of the wrist, and she too has learned it well.

"This isn't an FBI matter."

"It is now," he tells Chenault, and they pass her by like a surging tide.

Kate moves forward with them, as they descend on the conference room she once presided over, where Jordan once worked when she came here. Chenault disappears, probably to call the mayor, but she can call whomever she likes, Kate knows, and it won't make a difference. Officers hover and peer as they set up the command center. The murder board shimmers as it comes to life.

The captain returns, piqued, and obviously thwarted.

"Look, we have this," she argues as they move around her. "We have Castle. We have him at the crime scene. We have witness testimony that confirms he was arguing with the victim only hours before her death. And we have his prints in blood all over the body. It's done, it's over."

Kate thinks of the chocolate print she missed on her desk once. It's just like Castle, always putting his fingers where he shouldn't and leaving not quite indelible traces.

"If you came because of her – " Chenault begins, pointing towards Kate.

"We came because there are five other murders that link to this crime," Niall cuts in, and she can hear the grit in his voice, the way the captain's words have rubbed him against the grain. He hasn't said anything, but this was a matter for the New York field office and really they shouldn't even be here, wouldn't be, Kate knows, except that she asked. Castle called, and she asked.

Niall nods at her and she loads the previous cases. The murder board springs to life as she touches it, and she can hear cops whisper and stare at the technology. She remembers when she too was that impressed, when Castle was. Now she's used to it, she relies on it, and she routs the information to the screen. Jordan, on the rare occasions that they work with her, prefers to study cases from afar, detached and distant. Niall takes more time, is more meticulous, almost too much so, and frontloads every detail, every last bit of information. She falls somewhere in between them. She likes to handle the board, bringing up information electronically the way she used to spell it out in dry-erase marker, immersing herself in the case, effortlessly sorting the bits and pieces into a coherent picture. She hasn't learned that from Chaloner, but working with him has made her better at it.

"Five cases," Kate begins, watching out of the corner of her eye as more officers including Esposito file wordlessly into the room. Kate recognizes Karpowski standing next to him.

"Boston, Baltimore, Richmond, Atlanta, and DC." The cases pop up on the screen and she layers them against once another. "All attractive brunettes, 25-37. All successful, prominently so."

She taps twice and brings up the autopsies. A rookie in the corner starts to breathe heavily, another begins to turn a remarkable shade of green.

"All have marks of sustained assault and struggle. All have marks of strangulation and suffocation. All tested positive for drugs, including benzodiazepines and barbiturates. All killed by a 9mm at close-range to the back of the head."

"Detective Beckett – " Chenault begins.

"Agent Beckett," she corrects automatically.

The blonde ticks her head sideways and folds her arms across her chest.

"We need to talk to Richard Castle," Chaloner breaks in.

"Fine," Chenault says. "But he won't talk to anyone but her."

Kate turns from the board.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>The first time she re-enters the interrogation room, the man sitting across the table from her is Richard Castle. Kate remembers that the last time she was in this room, she shattered the glass window and nearly shot a suspect. She couldn't have a better excuse to do it again.<p>

The door knob sticks and then squeaks as she walks in. Castle looks up at her, and says something that she never expected.

"I did it."

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>It's been almost four years since she saw him last, in person anyway, walking away from her in the morning light.<p>

The first thing that hits her is how much he has aged. There is so much silver struck through his rumpled chestnut hair now, and a noticeable thickening around his waistline, a cascade of wrinkles on his face that she doesn't remember being so prominent. There is stubble on his cheeks, a great deal of it, and an oblong smudge of dirt or grease on his temple. His eyes are bloodshot, and there are sharp lines and puffy bags underneath them. He looks like he hasn't slept in years.

He looks scruffy, defeated. He looks awful.

She has sat across an interrogation table from him twice before, but that was different. It was not like this, like now. Now the room feels small, squalid, and less bright for having him in it.

She sits down.

"I did it," he says again but his eyes are glazed and he's not looking at her, as if he doesn't even really see her. She wonders if he's in shock. He looked gutted, grieving. He looks dazed, and not a little scared.

"Did you?" she asks carefully.

He looks up.

"Of course," he answers. "I left her alone. I wasn't there for her that night when she needed me. And now she's dead."

"Well, in that case, I should be dead too," Kate replies. She watches Castle's face contort, as finally he snaps out of it. She hadn't meant to say anything, but she's had too much time to think about her answers, to memorize that bitterness. He looks at her as if he can see through her, and she moves on quickly.

"What happened?" she asks.

"We argued, and I left, like always," Castle says and he shrugs his shoulders. "I tried calling around midnight, but there was no answer. I thought she probably went out too. Natalie usually did. She had a lot of friends I didn't know about, a lot from the old times. Sometimes they would get a little crazy, sometimes she wouldn't come home. When I came back around two, the rooms were dark. I thought she wasn't there."

His voice breaks a little. "But she was."

He tells her about it, about finding Natalie in their rooms, about the rush and panic. He tells her about the blood and the bruises, about the way the air smelled like copper and her skin looked like vellum, about the way congealed blood had dried like candied apples, like sticky sugar glaze, thick and red. He tells her about kneeling beside her, about reaching for her, about seeing the marks dark as delft around her neck, about seeing the dark space in her forehead where her temple should have been. He tells her about trying to find a pulse that wasn't there, that couldn't be, but checking anyway. He tells her about the cops, the paramedics, the people that gathered. He tells her about screaming, he tells her about being dragged away.

"Beckett, it's my fault," Castle says, leaning forward as if he could touch her. "I left Natalie that night, but I didn't pull the trigger. I didn't kill her."

When he looks at her this way she sees the man she once knew, the man she loved, the man that also loved Natalie Rhodes, dark and beautiful and tempestuous as she remembers her, who is now dead.

"That's why I called you."

She doesn't bother asking him how he got the number. She doesn't want to know, because if it was that easy, he could have called her years ago, long before this, long before death.

"I didn't know who else would believe me," he says.

"How do you know I do?"

Castle stares at her and she meets his blue eyes.

"Then why did you come?" he asks her.

There are many things she could say. She could say it was her job. She could say it's because she's part of the FBI's team. She could say it's because, despite it all, she wants to help. She could even say it's because he called her during the night, because he had no one else to call, or because he didn't call anyone else.

"Because I once promised I would get you out of jail," she says instead.

As she walks out, she wonders if she can live up to that promise.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>Kate goes to the one person she knows exactly where to find.<p>

"If I told you once, I've told you twice," Lanie sings out in her most aggrieved voice without looking up from where she is bending over a dead body. Her belly, round with child, bumps against the steel edges of the table. There is an edge of sadness like a knife slice, perfect and direct, to Kate's heart. She realizes there is so much she has missed.

"If you're wearing a suit, you're not getting my results!"

Kate walks up to her, where Lanie is poised holding a small scalpel over a pale white chest.

"No exceptions?"

Lanie looks up, and old anger flashes in her eyes. She pulls off her mask and Kate waits for an onslaught that never comes, as Lanie takes in the dove-grey suit, the sleek-cut jacket that flares over Kate's waist, over a pale blue silk shirt that shines like enamel. She takes in the lower heels, the shorter hair, the silver necklace at her throat. She looks at the badge on her hip that doesn't say NYPD.

For a second there is space between them and memory, but then Lanie comes over and hugs her tight instead, squeezing her around the bump of her belly.

"Girl, I thought you were never coming back."

"I'm not back, Lanie," Kate qualifies awkwardly. "I'm just here to help."

"You're the FBI," Lanie says. "Of course you are."

"So what do you think?" Kate asks her.

Lanie walks over to the computer screen and raps her fingers over the keyboard. Even without Lanie, she can see what she doesn't want to. Five bullets, five striation matches, the same gun.

"They're all a match," Lanie says slowly, though they both know the weapon has not been recovered at any of the crimes, and they have no records of it being used before.

"You're sure?" Kate regrets asking immediately, but Lanie ignores her and pretends she didn't hear.

"There's fiber," Lanie tells her, "from her neck. It matches too."

Kate leans against the metal table, braces herself against it.

"Kate, you know this is as airtight a case as I've seen," Lanie says from beside her. "For anyone else, this would be open and closed already."

"I know," Kate answers and wishes she didn't have to.

"I think that's why he called you." Lanie looks at her. "He thinks you're the one person who can save him."

She looks back at Lanie. "I once thought he was the only person who could save me," she says. "But I was wrong."

The door squeaks and Chaloner walks in behind them. She watches Lanie confront the distaste of his being FBI with the sheer appreciation of the way he wears his clothes, rather than the clothes wearing him. The charcoal suit slides over his shoulders, over a white shirt and slate tie slivered with amethyst lines. His cuff links snatch and flash in the light no less than his dark eyes. The appreciation wins, with no contest. Kate understands.

"Do we have results?" he asks, and his silk and gravel voice rumbles over her.

"Yes," they answer at the same time, and he smiles at her. Lanie notices, especially so when her foot catches as she reaches for the papers and Kate wobbles just slightly, and immediately his hand is at the small of her back. Lanie notices, and arches a single eyebrow as she hands over the report.

Niall doesn't miss the look.

"I'll wait for you upstairs," he says, and his hand leaves her back. Kate misses it.

"Soooo ..." Lanie leads off.

"So?"

"So tell me about … you." Lanie's eyes are still on the swinging door where a handsome FBI director has just disappeared.

"So, tell me about _you_," Kate counters and Lanie does until there is a rough outline of the years when Kate has been away.

"You still didn't answer my question," Lanie reminds her as she moves to leave.

There is no hesitation when Kate answers, none at all.

"There is no joy but lacks salt."

With that, she disappears up towards the man who first told her that.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/

* * *

><p>Kate stands in front of the murder board and tries not to feel disoriented, but there are so many things going on at so many different levels of reality that it makes her head spin.<p>

It's been a long day, and by the time she realizes that she is hungry, she finds that it's well past midnight. She goes to the coffee room and finds a box of pastries, and among them, a bear claw. It's stale and doesn't taste nearly as good as she thinks it should, but she eats it anyway.

The precinct is quieter now, but she still notices the rush and bustle of cops doing their jobs, the rustle of papers being filed, of phones clapping against receivers. Someone who's had one too many is singing and it echoes through the hallways. It's an Irish tune, and she's heard it before but she can't remember where.

They have reprocessed the crime scene but they only found exactly what they had already found at the other scenes: nothing. She's talked to Esposito and Lanie, and they both confirm her worst fears, that there is nothing to prove that Richard Castle did not commit this crime, that he did not murder his fiancée Natalie Rhodes, or for that matter, these other five women. There is nothing but his word and the slick lawyer that has come in to take over.

He has admitted to being angry, to fighting with Natalie that night, to leaving, to having no alibi. He was at the scene when the cops arrived, his prints are on the body, and he knows like few others where to get an unregistered gun if he wanted one. Worse than that, he's been in all the other cities at the times of the other murders, ostensibly on a book tour. Gina's confirmed that, albeit unwillingly. She thinks he's going to need that lawyer.

Kate wants to believe him but she's seen the evidence, and it's damning. She can't think he did it, yet all the facts tell her he has. Her mind and her heart quarrel, as everything points to his guilt, to his complicity. And yet, if he isn't guilty, if he hasn't done this, then there is a killer on the loose, waiting to strike again. That possibility is equally as horrifying.

In the stifling stillness of the room, Niall comes to stand beside her. He hands her a mug of tea as if he knows she needs one. He always does. She is grateful for it, no less than for his presence.

"What do you think?" he asks.

She hesitates, and she's never done that before.

"I don't know," she answers.

* * *

><p>-/-/-/-/


	7. Burning Clove

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 7: Burning Clove

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up.

Rating Note: T

Author's Note: This is the second to last chapter of this story. I will post the final chapter near August 21. I have been travelling these last weeks, away from home, but this story and you, the readers, have been my home. I would love to hear from you between now and then, and as I work on wrapping this up, on finishing it, I hope when you read the last part that you can say it has been worth it.

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><p>She goes to him because she needs answers, or, at least, that's what she tells herself.<p>

It is dark in the holding cells and cool, like they are trying to freeze out evil, render it innocuous, or maybe only preserve it. Castle is sitting on the metal bench, staring at the wall. He is very still, unnaturally so.

But when he sees her, he rises stiffly and comes over to the bars. He reaches through the spaces and touches her cheek. She slips forward and puts her head against the bars. The metal is icy and feels good on her forehead. His arms come around her, and she doesn't stop him as he pulls her against the only barrier between them, as if he could pull her through it, like anything, like magic.

He holds her, the best he can.

"Why?" she asks.

Remarkably, he knows exactly what she means.

"Because I loved you," he answers, as if that explains everything, as if the words should be exculpatory enough. "Because I couldn't watch you die."

"So you could let me die as long as you weren't watching?" Her words are raw, as she thinks of those months after he left, when her world came to pieces and he was nowhere to be found to help sweep them up, to glue them back together.

"Beckett," he says, and it sounds like an invocation. "You were like a star, turning yourself inside out. I thought I knew you. I thought I knew who you were. But when you made that deal, when Montgomery died and you told me you knew about it, that you took part in it – I didn't know you anymore. You weren't the person I fell in love with, and I knew then there was nothing I could do to stop you. I couldn't love you like that."

His voice breaks and she realizes they've spent years waiting to have this conversation, to say all these things that they had never said then.

"You knew you were going to get shot, and if you were willing to risk your life over it, I wasn't." His voice is flat now, thick and thready as a wobbling pulse.

She understands now, a little, what she didn't before, that he has suffered because of her as much as she has suffered because of him. She hadn't understood her own self-destruction then, or the pain it caused, because she couldn't see it. But she knows she couldn't have walked away.

"And Natalie?" she asks because in the end she needs to know.

"We were engaged," he says simply.

"I know," she answers.

Castle looks at her, and she holds his gaze.

"She wasn't strong like you, Beckett," he says, and she feels the weight of her old name, the way he says it like no one else. "She tried to be, but she wasn't. She couldn't take care of herself like you."

He takes a deep breath. "We weren't perfect for each other, but we were right. We were there, together. And she was there for me."

Kate thinks about the inscription in his latest book, _To the incredible NR, for being there._ She wonders if that's all life really is, being there.

She feels it now, his love for the actress. It's hard not to because it's mixed in with his grief and that makes it sharp and vivid. She doesn't want to, but she can understand how he could love Natalie, the vibrancy of her, the shift and quickness of her, like quicksilver, like mercury, like all bright sharp things. She remembers her from the visit to the precinct, remembers their visit to LA when she wasn't there, and wonders if those "personal problems" then were demons Castle helped her evade, or if in the end they took Natalie into darkness the way they almost took her self.

"She wasn't you, Beckett," Castle says, "but she was as close as I could get. And I loved her because she wasn't you."

There's a silence between them as she realizes what he means. She realizes that he still loves her, that he never stopped. And standing here with his arms around her, she realizes how much she still loves him too, and it nearly stops her heart with it.

"Natalie needed me," Castle says.

"I needed you too, Castle." Her words surprise her. "And you weren't there for me."

"You didn't need me," he defends.

"I did," she says, and then, "I do."

He's holding her and they are warm together as if nothing's changed. There is a long silence between them, the kind she remembers, where it was possible to say all sorts of things, where anything – even them, even love – were possible.

"Maybe I shouldn't have gone," he finally tells her.

"Maybe I should have stayed," she replies.

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><p>The holding room door swings open quickly, and a mix of FBI agents and New York cops pour in like oil and water. Chaloner and Chenault are leading, followed by Esposito and Karpowski. They are all talking at once, but when they see her, when they see them together, they all go quiet. The sudden silence echoes and Kate realizes she can hear the sound of her own breath. She can hear the steady pulse of Castle's heart as it thumps alongside her own.<p>

Someone coughs, she thinks it's Esposito, and Castle lets go, reluctantly. They are all looking at her in surprise, except for Niall, whose grey eyes bleed something far different.

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><p>"What are you doing?" Niall asks as he walks her up to the conference room. His voice is rough, and it rasps against her. His hand is still on the crook of her arm and Kate shrugs it off angrily. Suddenly she doesn't know where the lines are anymore, where one case begins and her past ends. The fluidness of the situation tears at her and she is so furious that she can't think straight.<p>

"I wasn't doing anything."

"I didn't bring you here for that."

"Then why did you?"

"Because you asked," he says very simply.

She stares at him and wonders if it can really be that easy.

"You think I wanted you to come here?" he asks without letting her speak, turning away from her. He doesn't let her answer before he continues. "Why would I? Why would I want to bring you back here, to him?"

There's a short silence between them, threadbare and wanting.

"Kate," Niall says, and his voice is softer. "I watched you come to me like a black hole, like there was nothing darker than what you'd seen, what you'd been through. And then slowly you began to pull yourself back. You found meaning in your work." He pauses for just a second, just enough for her to breathe before he takes her breath away again, the way he does when they make love. "I hoped you found meaning in me, in us."

"This isn't about that," she says. "This is about Castle."

"Yes, it is," Niall admits, as if he should have known better. "And your emotions are getting in the way of it."

His voice is level, barely, but Kate turns on him.

"Like they aren't when I'm with you?" she lashes out.

Niall doesn't flinch, but the light in his eyes flickers as if she's stung him, as if there's a live current sparked through smoky quartz, something that doesn't even carry voltage. He stands very close to her, and she feels the stretch and length of him, the crush and crumble of everything they've created. She feels it, and it is terrible.

"You're only named after a martyr," Niall says, and his words rush against her skin in anger. "Don't become one."

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><p>Kate walks out into the night and feels it rush around her, the sounds, the shapes, the sights.<p>

People pass by her, a taxi honks, an old copy of the _Times_ flutters at her feet. Someone bumps into her and curses. She curses back.

She's forgotten how alive New York is, the itch and tingle of it. She is startled by the colors, the brilliant reds and greens and blues, against the monochrome palate of DC, of the blue-grey-brown shades, of the summer swarm of seersucker. She's forgotten how everything glitters here, the very luster of it all, how even the street lights (for there are no stars) are like _paillettes_ sewn into the sky.

But that's the difference between New York and DC, the very power of it all. There's something visceral and unyielding about it in DC, something caught between shadow and shine, something tangible, something that touches the very depth of her, something that makes her move differently, think differently, even be different. But there's something electric and vibrant about New York, something that also attracts her, where something's always up, always on, something effervescent and dizzy like champagne and fast like speed, like too much coffee, like a kiss, like many.

She's forgotten how much she liked that, how she could feel the brush of it against her skin.

She knows she should go back. She knows she needs to work out this case. She knows she needs to save Castle, to keep her promise to him. She knows she needs to apologize to Niall.

There are so many things she needs to do.

Instead she leans against the precinct wall and closes her eyes. New York nights never get dark, and she can feel the flare of light and color, streetlamp and neon even through her closed eyelids.

She is used to this, she expects it.

What she does not expect is the darkness, this darkness that takes her before she can speak, this sudden and thorough darkness that descends over her world like sackcloth, silent and suffocating.

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	8. The Aftermark of Almost

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Chapter 8: The Aftermark of Almost

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up. So she rises.

Rating Note: T

Author's Note: Please scroll down past the ending for the author's note.

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><p>She wakes in darkness.<p>

Her mouth is dry and her tongue feels thick. She finds she is cold, and curled around herself. Something hurts, many things do. Her shoulders ache, but when she tries to move, she finds her hands tied, her ankles too. She isn't wearing shoes, and plastic garbage ties have cut into her skin.

She panics. Her head spins, her world whirls and everything turns sideways.

She tries to open her eyes, but realizes she is blindfolded. She tries to scream but finds there is tape across her mouth. She tries to fight the ties, strains against them, but they hold tight even when they become slippery with blood. She feels for her gun, her phone, even her badge, but finds that she has been stripped of everything, even her jacket. The hair on her arms stands up against the thin silk of her shirt, and gooseflesh rises all along her body. She feels naked, she feels scared.

She kicks out and connects with something hard, something strong. She kicks again and then again.

Suddenly she hears footsteps. A voice speaks to her.

"Be still," it says, and when she isn't, something stings her shoulder through the scars there. She flinches, and yells against the tape.

"I've got you," it croons as the darkness returns and smothers her. "I've got you now."

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><p>Kate knows what has happened.<p>

She remembers the street, lit by the New York night, and the way blackness came for her no less than for Natalie and the five women before her. She winces at the bite of bruises, of pounded flesh to match theirs.

Blackness dances around her, and Kate feels the whooshing of benzodiazepines in her blood, the siren singing of sedatives. She reels with it.

She feels blunted, purposely so. She doesn't want to fight, can't even summon the strength to. She can hardly fathom it, the desire to make her body move. She wants nothing but to sleep, but she forces herself to stay awake regardless.

Alone in the darkness, she thinks. She thinks about trying to escape but can't imagine how. She is lost in blackness once again, tied there so physically that she can't break free of it even though she wants to. She strains, she tries, she cries with an anguish that would rip her apart if only it could.

Bound into blackness, she tries to think of other things. She thinks of Castle. She thinks of Chaloner. She wonders if they realize that she is gone. She wonders if they will realize what's happened, if they possibly can.

She knows she shouldn't have doubted Castle, but she knows why she did, because she's not sure she can trust him with her heart, not after what's happened between them. And that was always how she used to believe him, from the very bottom of it to the very breaking of it.

The Castle she knew wasn't capable of death, but he killed her, the person she used to be. He killed Nikki Heat, the character she once inspired and Natalie once played. It's really not far to jump from writing about murder to actually doing it.

She thinks back to when she used to have butterflies every time she saw Castle, every time he brought her a coffee or a bear-claw at a crime scene, every time he looked across her desk when he thought she didn't know he was looking. Now those flutters of wings against her heart are gone. She only feels them now when she hears Chaloner's voice, when he rounds a corner before her, when he looks at her, when he asks her what she sees and she tells him.

As she waits in the darkness, Kate understands this isn't a choice between whom she loves, but between who she can be and who she is. She remembers what Niall said to her, and she knows too well that joy has salt, just as she also knows that's what makes it sweeter, what makes it worthwhile. How would you know if sugar is sweet if you had nothing sour to measure it by? Only Niall could tell her such things in poetry so she would understand. Only Niall.

It is then she hears the footsteps returning.

Her head tells her to stay calm, to not panic, but the rest of her knows better. She tries to pinpoint the sound, but it seems to come from all directions. Behind her, she hears the tinny squeak of a police frequency, the radio codes for movement, the bleat and screech of urgency and attack. Then she feels the brush of hands over her head.

The cord comes around her throat so quickly she can't move. It's thin and tensile, like garrote, and the thrust of it alone knocks the breath from her. She gasps as it is yanked across her windpipe, as air burns in her throat. She flails, and the cord catches on her silver necklace, on the cabochon moonstone; it sinks no further into her flesh. She waits for the spun silver to give way, but it doesn't, it holds, and it gives her a precious moment while she still has breath to move. With all her strength she throws herself backward and they both fall.

She scrabbles against another body and lashes out blindly. But there is nothing there, nothing except a distinct click, one she knows too well. She freezes as she feels the tip of a gun pressed to the back of her head.

This is it, she thinks. It will end here.

She wonders if she will feel it, death when it comes. She's worked around it for so long that sometimes she thinks she's numb to it, that she has to be, but now she remembers the tip of the silver blade, the way she balanced the knife against her arm that night in her kitchen, the asp-sting of blood.

She has waited for a bullet once before, one she knew was coming. But this is different. There was a time once when she wanted to die, but it's not now, not here.

She feels the suck of the barrel against her skull, she feels the shiver of the trigger.

Then she hears the gunshot.

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><p>The light when it comes is so sudden and fierce that she flinches away from it.<p>

She doesn't understand, can't, and she tries to scream. Something grapples at her, pins her back into stillness, almost pummels her there, as the cloth is ripped from her eyes, the tape from her mouth.

The world twists like a kaleidoscope filled with bleach, overexposed and spinning.

She thinks she might be sick, and she gropes for something to hold on to. Someone's arm comes around her, and a familiar voice speaks to her, someone she can distinguish even against the rest of them around her, at volume and pitch. He says her name, and slowly the world shifts into focus again. She blinks as Castle appears before her.

"How did you find me?" she asks, in unbelief as Castle pulls her to her feet. She stumbles and nearly falls. She's lost feeling in her legs and has to lean on him.

"I didn't," he answers as he puts his arm around her. "He did."

Castle gestures at the man coming towards them, this man with grey eyes and gun drawn. Of all people, Niall Chaloner would know how to find her, in ways that Castle never could.

Through the swarms of people, they look at each other. They hold each other across the space. And she realizes with certainty that what we don't say in life is often more important than what we do.

She tries to go to Niall, she needs to, but Castle is holding on to her as if he won't let go, and he doesn't, not until the paramedics cut in and take her away to a waiting ambulance. She submits to their pokes and prods, to the bandages and the butterfly clamps, to the heavy blanket over her shoulders. Alone she feels woozy, lightheaded, lost.

The night shivers around her in sirens and silence and out of it, Jordan comes to her.

"We got him," she says without preamble, because that's how she is. "Ralph Edwards, 32. He's an accountant. His girlfriend left him two years ago." She shows Kate a picture of a brunette who bears a striking resemblance to the six women and herself. There's a slither in Kate's belly as she confronts the image, as Jordan tells her the gun that was held against her head is already being processed, that Lanie is working on it and it appears to be a match for all the cases.

"Why now? " Kate asks. "What made him snap?"

"Who knows?" Jordan answers though she isn't being flippant. "The girl at Starbucks spilled his drink, a cop gave him a parking ticket, the dry cleaners ruined his shirts. We'll never know." And she seems ok with that, because as Kate realizes, they have to be. There are some things we can't understand, maybe even shouldn't.

Who knows the untapped violence we all have within ourselves, Kate wonders. Who knows what we are capable of? Who knows our great capacity for soaking in darkness until we no longer know light?

It can take the smallest thing to make someone snap, a mother's indifference, a spilled drink, a rainy day, even just someone you love walking out your door.

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><p>Jordan brings her back to the 12th the next day. The precinct is buzzing as they walk in. Niall, Castle, and Chenault are all clustered together in the captain's office. She stops and watches as Castle shakes hands with them all, as if it were over, and maybe it is, it can be.<p>

"He loves you, Kate."

"Which one?"

"They both do." Jordan's voice is soft, and there is a moment of silence between them.

"Which one do you love back?"

"I don't know," Kate answers, and her honesty rips at her. She loves them both, in different ways.

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><p>The conference room is empty now, except for the murder board and a few boxes waiting to be packed and shipped back to DC. The board is blank, but still lit up like a Lite-Brite.<p>

Outside there are garbled voices, an airplane taking off, and the odious burp of taxi horns, strident and vehement. She smells the tang of cheap coffee, the stink of pot from a suspect that shuffles by, the sweet icing of fresh donuts. Cops mull around, changing shifts. New York rolls on around her, the way she remembers.

Niall stands there alone, signing papers.

She isn't surprised. She used to be that person, the one that stayed, in this very spot. She still knows the grooves on the floor, the cracked patterns in the linoleum, the sputtering in the pipes above, the wheezing of the air unit. She knows there's a spot where she spilled a cappuccino Castle made for her and it stained, but looking now she can't find it.

Niall looks up as she walks in, and straightens, standing tall like a pole star, like true north. Even from a distance she feels the magnetic pull of him, everything that draws her to him, that brings her home.

She goes to the murder board and shuts it off. The room becomes darker, and she feels him as he comes to stand beside her. For a second, she thinks how it used to be Castle doing this, because she remembers how he used to come stand beside her here as she went through cases over and over and over again. Only a person that loves you can stand beside you like that, next to you without taking your space, being there but letting you stand alone.

But the eyes staring back at her are grey, not blue. And yet, they seem to know what she is thinking, more than anyone else. Niall Chaloner smiles, and she thinks it's a sad movement on his beautiful face.

"What do you see?" he asks, but the question seems old and weary in his voice.

She tells him, because she always does.

"A good man," she answers.

She takes his hand and holds it, wrapping her fingers through his, weaving herself through all his empty spaces.

"Kate," his voice is softer than she imagined, as he brushes her cheek, touches the shimmering moonstone at her throat. "If you asked, I would leave for you."

She knows he would. He offers her everything. He offers her everything Castle did not, and she knows he would give it to her without hesitation because that's how he works, that's what makes him who he is. She remembers what he said about making the picture clearer, about putting everything into perspective. He does that for her too. But she would never ask him to leave, not the FBI, not for her, not the place where she found meaning again, where they give meaning to so many others.

"No," she says softly. "I want you to stay, for me."

He will offer her the world, whatever world she wants, but he will not make this choice for her, and she loves him for that. He breathes out softly.

"You'll always have a place on my team."

Then he kisses her, just once, and walks away.

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><p>"My mother once said, for a man who makes his living with words, I sure have a hell of a time finding them when they count," Castle says.<p>

"She was right," Kate agrees.

They are standing outside the precinct. He offers to buy her a coffee, but she says no. He looks confused, but she doesn't explain. She doesn't want any more bitterness.

They both move to speak, and then stop. They stand before each other, facing off as if there's no lost time, no weary memories, no death or desertion, between them, as if everything was still possible, and Kate wonders if it is.

"What happened with your mother's death?" he asks suddenly, and it sounds like it hurts when he does. It sounds like he doesn't want to know, and Kate thinks, he really doesn't.

For a second, she doesn't know how to answer. "Did Niall tell you?"

"Chaloner?" Castle asks, and he looks surprised to hear her use his first name. "No, he didn't."

Kate knows Niall would never tell something that wasn't his to give. He has left her that, and it is beautiful as much as it pains her.

So she tells him, not because he asked, but because he should know. She tells Castle about the day that Niall came to her, that day just over a year ago, the day he asked her to sit in his office and showed her a set of files that had been mailed to the CIA three years before, postmarked May 2011. She tells Castle that she recognized them immediately and that her heart stopped, because they were addressed in Roy Montgomery's writing. She tells Castle about the three months of work, of joint cooperation with the CIA and other organizations, of all the links and snags and leads they followed. She tells him of the hours Niall put in, the strings he pulled, the favors he called in until she was sure he had none left. She tells Castle about Bristol Stevens, the man who had been in the alley that night, about the crime syndicate, about the money transfers, about the senators and lobbyists and mobsters no less than the dirty cops, about a picture that was so much bigger than she had ever imagined, so much bigger than a NY cop could handle. She tells Castle she needed the FBI for this, needed the resources, the contacts, the connections. She tells Castle that she needed the perspective, she needed that bigger picture.

What she doesn't tell Castle is that she nearly came apart again, and but for Niall, she would have. What she doesn't tell him is that Niall stood by her, no matter what she'd done in her past, what deals she'd made or bad decisions or compromises, no matter what had happened then, because this was now, this was different, and somehow he would not let her fall. What she doesn't tell Castle is how she finally came out of the interrogation room, from hearing this man Bristol Stevens confess to the murder of Johanna Beckett, of how she came into Niall's waiting arms and he held her as she cried. What she doesn't tell Castle is how she finally managed to say, "It's over," and Niall answered, "No, it's only beginning," and for the first time she thinks of the rest of her life without a pall over it. What she doesn't tell Castle is how she said to Niall that she needed to see her father, and Niall replied without any hesitation, "Get in the car," and he drove her almost five hours in the middle of the night so she could arrive in New York at morning, at her father's door, so when he opened it he saw her face, this great and final peace of it.

What she doesn't tell Castle, what she doesn't have to, is that Niall was there for her when he wasn't.

There are no victories, Montgomery had told her, as he had told her so many times. There is only the battle, the stand you make in it, and who is with you without knowing whether or not you'll stay or fall. Through it all, through darkness, Niall Chaloner has stood with her, unfailingly.

When Castle looks at her now, she knows he sees the bright moonstone around her neck, the cabochon cut that Niall gave her, the stone that defies even darkness. He sees that she no longer wears her mother's ring, that she no longer needs to. She doesn't need remembrance, and all her memories are already in her heart.

"So it's over?" Castle asks as if he doesn't believe it, and she knows how he feels, because sometimes she can't either.

"Yes," she answers and she isn't lying. "At least our parts in it are."

Bristol Stevens will go to trial on seventeen counts of murder, plus assorted other charges. She doesn't want to be there.

Looking at him now she wonders if Castle understands, if he sees the role he played in all this. She asks him and he looks at her blankly. He doesn't understand that such things are like Pandora's box, once opened and never closed. He doesn't seem to understand, perhaps has never understood, just what he started when he looked into her past. Only Niall did, Niall who could stand by her and finish it, no matter what it might cost him, no matter that it might even cost her.

"Was it worth it?" Castle asks, and she wonders what he's asking, really, if he even knows himself. The only thing she knows about life is that there's no such thing as no regrets, but she knows she regrets some things less than others. This is one of them.

There's no way of knowing what would have happened if she had stayed in New York, if he had, and that's the point. Perhaps he never would have done anything, perhaps she never would have either, but she does know if she had stayed, if she had compromised even further with herself than she had with Montgomery, if she had let it go, let her mother down, that she would have regretted that always. And in her heart, she knows she would have hated Castle for it, no matter how much she also loved him.

"Yes," she answers because she has no other.

Kate understands now that she and Castle were like a greenstick fracture, so injured that they had to be rebroken before they could heal. But she knows this too, that even broken bones do not heal straight, that there will always be a weak spot, a smudge and bump where it thickens, a lump where the injury remains. It can't ever be the same, but maybe it can only be different.

In the end Castle says nothing, not even that he's happy for her because maybe he's not, but he takes her into his arms, and she remembers what a warm and welcoming place that is.

They stand there like that, together, for a very long time.

"What do you want?" he asks, as if he could offer it to her, and his voice melts against her ear.

She could say so many things.

What she wants is an apology, what she wants is forgiveness, what she wants is four years past. I wanted you to love me, she wants to say, but doesn't. She knows he did, she knows he does still, but it wasn't the kind of love she needed, the kind she was ready for at that time. And then the time passed.

In the end, after everything, it's not nearly as tragic as it appears. This, them, can be explained so simply, and perhaps that is what really breaks her heart. The fact that they did nothing, either of them.

"Are there words for people like us?" she asks instead.

"No," he answers at last. "There are just stories."

She nods, as if it makes sense, and maybe it does to him. She hopes so.

Castle pulls back and hands her a wad of papers. It's familiar, the weight and texture of it, and she realizes as she turns it over that it's a bound manuscript.

"I was wrong," he says. "I brought Nikki back."

"Castle," she begins and there is exasperation in her voice already. "You killed Nikki Heat, remember? _Heat Storm_?"

She can see he's oddly flattered that she still reads his books, comforted perhaps that even she couldn't let him go completely.

"Yes, but since I brought back Derek Storm, I can bring back Nikki Heat." He won't let her forget that she's important to him, he can't.

But she isn't a character and her life isn't a book.

"Couldn't live without her?" Kate replies, and there's more sarcasm and less hurt in her voice than she expected.

"I couldn't live without you."

She looks at the title. _Storm Heat._ She thinks it's clever, as if he can reverse anything, even death, even titles, with his words.

Kate takes the book, but she doesn't want to read it. She will put it on her shelf with all the other bright and black Richard Castle books, the ones with her name and soul, and the ones without. She doesn't need to read the book to know what happens between them. That part is unwritten, as it should be.

"It would have been great," she says, and she remembers the first time he said those same words to her, the first time they worked on a case together. They were standing on the street, just like this. It seems so long ago. It seems like yesterday.

Castle smiles and touches her face. He kisses her cheek.

"You have no idea," he whispers against her ear.

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Dear Readers,

This has been an unforgettable journey for me, not just because of the power or momentum or even the magic of this story, but because of _you_. There are no words to thank you, to express my gratitude at your inspirations, your support.

This is where the story ends. What happens to Kate, now? That is for you to decide. How do we go on when we know there is no going back? Perhaps we know, in the words of Robert Frost:

Now no joy but lacks salt

That is not dashed with pain

And weariness and fault;

I crave the stain

.

Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love,

The sweet of bitter bark

And burning clove.

In the end, this story spoke, as it has from the beginning. We authors think that we write the story, but in truth some stories write us. For the entirety of this work there have always been two endings, just as there were two great loves, both written since the very beginning. But there was always one that felt right. And so there is an Epilogue, which I will post in a few days. Ignore it, or enjoy it, as you wish.

Thank you, for being there. Thank you, for everything.

Elliott Silver

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	9. To Earthward, Epilogue

Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Epilogue: To Earthward

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up. So she rises.

Rating Note: M

The hurt is not enough: / I long for weight and strength / To feel the earth as rough / To all my length.

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><p>The last week has been a blur, and looking back on it, Kate thinks some things are better that way.<p>

She has stayed in New York. Castle asked her to Natalie's funeral, and she went because he did, dressed in a black suit to mourn for this beautiful, talented woman who would have been his wife, whom he has also loved. They stand together under the shade of elms after the service, under a bright and flaring sky. He grieves, and his pain is real.

She waits for him, and afterwards she drives them back to the city. He talks and she lets him. He tells her about the past, about being gone. He tells her about the future, about moving forward. He tells her about Gina, about the publisher, about moving back to New York. He tells her that Alexis is coming too, that she is getting married in the fall at the Hamptons, and he asks Kate to join them.

But as they drive in, as the traffic slows, he says something else entirely.

"I heard Chenault offered you her job," he says.

"Yes," Kate answers, because she did.

"It's a good offer," Castle tells her. "It's everything you wanted."

But at the same time, she knows it's not, that it's not anymore, and that Castle doesn't really know her as well as he thinks, because if he did, he would have known that back then all she wanted was him.

She knows what he's really asking. But she also knows that there will always be roads not taken, that there has to be, because there is no going back, only simply going on, because that is life and we live with the choices we make and they are as beautiful as much as they hurt.

She smiles, and then he does, but they both know. She was a good cop, but she's a better agent.

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><p>It's only May but it's already muggy as hell outside. It's supposed to storm all day and the room is black as the skies outside.<p>

But when he walks in, he makes all the darkness fade, makes the blurry edges sharp again. He is distinct against the darkness, and he makes her that way too. He's the only one she knows who can do that, and she loves him for it. He enters darkness with her.

His white shirt glows, and he carries a single mug of tea. He holds it in his hand awkwardly, as if he doesn't know how to carry it without another, and she imagines the heat of it, the way it diffuses through the lines of his palm, this way he has always held fragile things.

On the outside there seems to be very little different about this man she saw last only a week ago, and she expects no differently, no less. He stands on his own, tall and straight, because he too has learned how to do what he taught her so well. His shirt falls in crisply starched planes around him, his suit pants taper over his long legs, and his dark tie is knotted only slightly looser than always at his throat, because even tangled things have a beauty of their own.

But he looks older than forty-four today, and she realizes that's because there's something missing, something intrinsic, as necessary to him as breath. It's her, it's everything she's missing too, and here, now, she knows that this is her stand, this is her choice, this is her road. There is no other, and she feels the deep and residing peace of that, to know so fully that this is what she wants, to stay with this man as he's asked her, permanently.

There's so much about him that she doesn't know yet, but she wants to spend the rest of her life learning, learning from him, learning with him. She wants to do this, to confront the evil of this earth with him by her side, she wants to make the world a better place for it and with him she knows she can.

She wants to see his frown, those downward lines of consternation, of concentration, as they tackle this world together, the tragedy and horror of it, because someone has to and they choose to. She wants to see his easy smile in the mornings when he makes tea, and hear his laughter, rough and sustaining as the earth, when they sit on the roof under the stars. She wants to feel his grey eyes on her, the weight of them, the strength. She wants to feel his hand on her back, his shadow on her skin. She wants phone calls in the night, Sunday brunches disturbed, the jostle and jar of upset schedules, the solitude and strain of away, everything that isn't easy, because she wants them all with this man. She wants to see him get the medal of valor, the highest honor of the FBI, and she wants to see his unrestrained pride when she becomes deputy director. She wants to see him as a father. She wants to see what is in that blue box, small enough to hold cartridges, on his dresser where he keeps his cufflinks.

Kate breathes, and feels a butterfly beat its wings against her heart.

She comes out of the darkness to meet him, and he stops when he sees her. He halts as if it's taken his breath away. She realizes it has, the same way he does for her. But it's rather that he breathes again, that she does too. The darkness on his face, in his eyes, drains away, the weariness fades from his body. It isn't surprise or relief exactly but all things at once, a joy so pure and unrefined that she knows this is exactly why she's come here, why she's come home.

He moves, swift and certain as always, and comes over. He hands her the mug of tea, handle first, and she takes it. She has missed it, the earth and lift of it, this bright tang of light and life and leaf. For a long moment, they lean against the table in silence. They stand, together.

"What do you see?" she asks him, at last.

The words feel beautiful as she says them, as he's said to her so many times, and she watches the corners of his mouth turn up. Over his shoulder, the summer sun rises, shedding and slaying darkness as it crests in the sky. It fills the room, banishing night in ways forecasters can never predict.

The moonstone glitters against her throat and she sees its light reflected in his grey eyes.

Later – much later – she knows they will go home together. They will set down their guns, they will take off their badges. She will turn and he will be there, this way he always has been, vivid and unwavering. She will kiss him and he will open his mouth to hers, they will tangle and let their skins, marred and rippled with scars, slide against one another. He will kiss around the silver edges of this necklace, this beautiful thing that saved her life no less than the man who gave it to her. Then he will kiss the frayed skin around her wrists, so tenderly that his touch will make her cry. He will kiss away those tears and she will taste this beautiful salt, this infinite joy, between them, this way his heart beats not against hers but with it. Then he will move lower and she will move with him, as he slides against her, into her, this way, radiant and unremitting, they also come together.

But for now, there is work. This is their job, their center. This is what brought them together and this is how they work, too. Together, they do it better than anyone else.

The murder board glows before them. There is no case, no notes, no timeline. There is nothing there, nothing written anyway, but there will be. They have so much to do yet. She knows it, she feels it, and she waits only to start.

"What do you see?" she asks again.

Niall Chaloner turns to her the way he always has, and she breathes. She stops waiting.

The rest of her life begins with his answer.

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><p>"Everything."<p>

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><p>.<p> 


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